Le Calvaire is a largely autobiographical novel, in which Mirbeau romanticizes his devastating affair with a woman of dubious morals, Judith Vinmer, who appears as "Juliette Roux" in the novel.

[1] The story is narrated in the first person by the main character, the antihero Jean Mintie, who has literary ambition and the potential to become a good writer, but is incapable of overcoming his sexual obsessions.

I found none of the lofty abstractions of honor, justice, charity, patriotism of which our standard books are so full, on which we are brought up, with which we are lulled to sleep, through which they hypnotize us in order the better to deceive the kind little folk, to enslave them the more easily, to butcher them the more foully."

"They condemn to death the stealthy murderer who kills the passerby with a knife, on the corner of the street at night, and they throw his beheaded body into a grave of infamy.

But the conqueror who has burned cities and decimated human beings, all the folly and human cowardice unite in raising to the throne of the most marvelous; in his honor triumphal arches are built, giddy columns of bronze are erected, and in the cathedrals multitudes reverently kneel before his tomb of hallowed marble guarded by saints and angels under the delighted gaze of God!"