Read "The Monomaniac" by Émile Zola online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Precisely at 11.15, the advertised time, the signalman at the Pont de l'Europe, gave the two regulation blows of the horn, to announce the Havre express, which issued from the Batignolles tunnel. Soon afterwards the turn-tables rattled, and the train entered the station with a short whistle, grating on the brakes, smoking, shining, dripping with the beating rain that had not ceased since leaving Rouen.
The porters had not yet turned the handles of the doors, when one of them opened, and Séverine sprang lightly to the platform, before the train had stopped. Her carriage was at the end. To reach the locomotive, she had to hurry through the swarm of passengers, embarrassed by children and packages, who had suddenly left the compartments. Jacques stood there, erect on the foot-plate, waiting to go to the engine-house; while Pecqueux wiped the brasswork with a cloth.