Le vrai bonheur : ou, Les amants de Stresa by Henri de Régnier
Insomnia by Sir James Sawyer is a literary novella written in the early 20th century. It examines the lure and fragility of happiness, tracing how a woman, buoyed by fortune‑telling and hope, believes she has found perfect joy in a love that defies convention. A reflective narrator recalls meeting Germaine de Gaillandre, a refined Parisian widow, anxious and superstitious, who clings to charms and the forecasts of a discreet seer, Mme Quittenard.
After the narrator’s absence, he learns from a dandyish acquaintance and a painter, Massot, that Germaine has fallen for the breathtakingly beautiful Jean de Querdrun, a youth she met in Massot’s studio. Visiting them in Stresa on Lake Maggiore, the narrator sees Germaine blissful and transformed, while Jean—gentle, vain, and fond of silks and her jewels—accepts adoration with childlike ease. Two years later Germaine returns to Paris in shock: Jean has vanished overnight with her finest pieces, including her beloved pearls. Mme Quittenard’s civil‑servant son traces Jean to his Latin Quarter room, where he surrenders the jewels in tears—especially the pearls—and bluntly says he left because he’d “had enough,” intending to finish law and wed a local girl. The tale closes on the seer’s dry consolation: Germaine had three years of perfect happiness—and, at least, she recovered her necklace. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide
| Reading Options | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77329.html.images | 91 kB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77329.epub3.images | 218 kB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77329.epub.images | 217 kB | |||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77329.epub.noimages | 125 kB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77329.kf8.images | 440 kB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77329.kindle.images | 428 kB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77329.txt.utf-8 | 82 kB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/77329/pg77329-h.zip | 178 kB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
Similar Books
About this eBook
| Author | Régnier, Henri de, 1864-1936 |
|---|---|
| Title | Le vrai bonheur : ou, Les amants de Stresa |
| Original Publication | Paris: Horizons de France, 1929. |
| Series Title | Les roses latines, 1 |
| Credits | Laurent Vogel (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica)) |
| Language | French |
| LoC Class | PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese |
| Subject | French fiction -- 20th century |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 77329 |
| Release Date | Nov 24, 2025 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 190 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |