Project Gutenberg 2025-06-15 Public domain in the USA. 115 Ardel, Henri 1863 1938 Abraham, Berthe Ardel, Henry L'heure décisive $aParis :$bPlon, $c1899. Laurent Vogel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) "L'heure décisive" by Henri Ardel is a novel written in the late 19th century. Set in Parisian salons and modest apartments, it follows Denise Muriel, a gifted young singer from a ruined bourgeois family, as she weighs the perilous allure of the theater against her pride, independence, and need to support her own. Her magnetism captivates the refined clubman Bertrand d’Astyèves, while a passionate composer and a clear‑sighted woman of letters recognize her rare talent and character. The opening of the novel presents a brilliant salon at Mme Arnales’s, where Denise debuts Vanore’s Poèmes sylvestres and stuns a fashionable audience; Bertrand, struck by her voice and reserve, escorts her briefly to the buffet and learns hints of her reluctance to pursue the stage. Denise, paid discreetly and eager to escape the air of condescension, returns home to a cramped flat, where her bitter mother, easygoing father, and schoolboy brother reveal a family strained by past ruin and present economies; alone on her balcony, she longs for love yet vows to keep her integrity. At the start of the next scene, Bertrand visits the salon of Mme Claude Champdray, Denise’s loyal friend, hoping to see her; Denise arrives, and in a restrained, incisive exchange she shows a lucid, skeptical spirit, sympathy for the struggling, and a stubborn independence that complicates everyone’s designs for her future. (This is an automatically generated summary.) https://books.google.com/books?id=VvoMAQAAIAAJ 20240217133518ardel 1899 FR Reading ease score: 79.0 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read. fr French fiction -- 19th century PQ Text Category: Novels Category: French Literature 450532 2025-07-30T07:32:56.126422 text/html 425952 2025-06-15T09:19:52 text/html 320718 2025-07-30T07:33:02.976411 application/epub+zip 320277 2025-07-30T07:32:57.348450 application/epub+zip 275695 2025-07-30T07:32:56.675475 application/epub+zip 509420 2025-07-30T07:33:07.098365 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 490273 2025-07-30T07:33:02.509457 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 405999 2025-07-30T07:32:55.012479 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 386149 2025-06-15T09:19:52 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 13807 2025-07-30T07:33:07.269371 application/rdf+xml 11050 2025-07-30T07:32:56.896427 image/jpeg 2187 2025-07-30T07:32:56.798436 image/jpeg 260862 2025-07-30T07:32:56.166470 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog fr.wikipedia