The sudden changes of her disposition, from extreme sadness to extreme gayety, and her babble, arose from the need of forgetting herself, of forgetting her life, in the continual intoxication of varied and very brief occupations.
"Thus we lived in a perpetual fog, in which we did not distinguish our condition.

We were like two galley-slaves fastened to the same ball, cursing each other, poisoning each other's existence, and trying to shake each other off.

I was still unaware that ninety-nine families out of every hundred live in the same hell, and that it cannot be otherwise.
I had not learned this fact from others or from myself.

The coincidences that are met in regular, and even in irregular life, are surprising.

At the very period when the life of parents becomes impossible, it becomes indispensable that they go to the city to live, in order to educate their children.