French literature summaries - 2021

Short summary - The Blue Room
Prosper Mérimée

Micro-narration: A couple of Parisian lovers secretly get out to a provincial town to indulge in love pleasures in a quiet hotel. The young man was assured that this was the quietest hotel imaginable. The adventure began on the train. A fellow traveler of Parisian lovers, a mysterious Englishman with a bag full of money, and his equally mysterious nephew, started a brawl right in the carriage. It turned out that they intend to stay at the same hotel. Moreover, in the banquet hall, next to the blue room, where the couple in love were settled, two regiments of French cavalry organized a noisy drinking party ...

In Paris, Leo and his girlfriend take a train to N. There, not far from the Seine, they want to spend the night in an inexpensive hotel ... “We are alone!” The girl in the compartment rejoices. Suddenly a man enters them. He speaks fluent French and English. Young people immediately determine that he is an Englishman. With him they get to N.

In the only hotel in the town, a couple gets the "Blue Room". She is considered the best. It contains two armchairs covered with Utrecht velvet and a fireplace. Their English companion stops in the next room. A double door separates them. Soon, the lovers hear an ever-increasing piercing noise, which, according to the hotel owner, is created by a cheerful company of officers that arrived at the hotel.

The careless solitude of the young people is broken by the Englishman's sharp, loud jokes, clearly audible through the wall.

The Englishman wants to order a bottle of port, but the hotel does not have it. The resourceful owner mixes fruit schnapps and cognac. Leo calls the hotel a "hole", although his lover feels like in paradise. Even the hussars do not interfere.

Behind the wall, an Englishman shouts: "Waiter, another bottle of port!" Leo then hears an "incomprehensible rumble" from the Englishman's room, followed by a "muffled scream." After a while, on the parquet, under the double door of the Englishman's room, something appears that Leo takes for blood in the flickering of a candle.

At first, he hides from his beloved that there was a murder in the room. When his girlfriend wakes up the next morning, they are about to flee the hotel. Leo pays the owner and intends to catch the morning train to Paris. In a conversation with a magnificent deli, it turns out that the Englishman simply broke the second bottle of port and, being drunk, “chopped off”, hence the choked cry.

Upon learning of this, the couple decides to stay at the hotel, but only until lunchtime.