The stone-cutters are in it, our landlady is in it, and the feeling of our surroundings, perhaps a little more sombrely than the reality", and explained how the story originated: while being driven from Lannion to Île-Grande, the driver pointed out "the idiots", saying "Four - hein.

[8][9] Conrad had a poor opinion of this story, writing that it was "an obviously derivative piece of work"; he did not name a model, but critics, among them Jocelyn Baines and Laurence Graver have supposed that it was influenced by Guy de Maupassant.

Jean-Pierre Bacadou, returning from military service, finds his elderly father's farm is in a poor state, and resolves to make improvements.

"That child, like the other two, never smiled, never stretched its hand to her, never spoke..." The parish priest calls on the local landowner, the Marquis de Chavanes, to say that Jean-Pierre Bacadou, a republican, has attended Mass, an unheard-of event.

The Marquis de Chavanes makes arrangements to have Madame Levaille made guardian of the children and administrator of the farm, rather than a member of the republican Bacadous.

The inspiration for "The Idiots" was largely derived from the works of Conrad's older French contemporaries Guy de Maupassant and Gustave Flaubert.

"[13] Baines offers this passage to demonstrate her latter point: The darkness came from the hills, flowed over the coast, put out the red fires of sunset, and went on to seaward pursuing the retiring tide.

[14]The story is divided into four segments: the introduction of the disabled children; the circumstances of the unfortunate parents; the violent climax in which the wife murders her husband and commits suicide; and the denouement involving the festivities at a local wedding.

[15] Literary critic Laurence Graver writes: The story concludes with a brief epilogue in which the restoration of order in the village is shown to have richly ironic overtones.

[16]Graver considers Conrad's handling of the climax of the story "preposterous", but notes that the epilogue "returns to the terseness and irony" characteristic of Maupassant.

Characters revealed at moments of extreme exasperation, a hero enslaved by a destructive, a denouement of exile, bloodletting and suicide - all these are motifs with which the reader of Victory and Nostromo is well acquainted.