THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOPThe Old Curiosity Shop tells the story of Nell Trent, a beautiful and virtuous girl of "not quite fourteen". Orphaned, she lives with her maternal grandfather, who remains nameless, in the middle of the junk shop of her antique shop. His existence is solitary, almost exclusively devoted to the love of the old man and to the care that he lavishes on him; without a real companion or companion of her age, her only friend is Kit, the young employee of the shop to whom she tries to teach writing.Secretly obsessed by the fear that his granddaughter will die in poverty like his parents, the old man leads a secret life and is absent every night. It is only after fifty pages that the mystery of his absences is revealed: he plays large sums of money cards and, to guarantee his stakes, regularly borrows from a usurer, the dwarf Daniel Quilp who, deformed and sadistic, terrorizes his entourage, including his young wife, and practices sarcasm and irony with virtuosity. Soon, all the goods of the old man are pledged and Quilp takes possession of the place.The ruined old antiquarian sinks into a deep melancholy and his life remains in abeyance for long months, while Quilp and his henchman Sampson Brass, a man of recognized but servile law, camp on the spot. Nell watches his grandfather day and night and, as soon as he regains some strength, is secretly decided between the two lonely to escape on the roads and live under the stars begging. Their steps, guided at first by chance alone, lead them gradually into the Midlands, following a road strewn with pitfalls and terrors, which was more or less identified.Meanwhile, convinced that the old man had amassed a fortune for his granddaughter, Nell's prodigal brother, Frederick, persuaded the na�ve Dick Swiveller to look for them so that Nell could marry him and grandfather's legacy falls into their hands. To this end, they are allied with Quilp, well aware that he has nothing to gain but that his sadism encourages us to encourage their hopes to better enjoy the distress of all.The dwarf therefore goes hunting; tracking is difficult because the fugitives leave few traces. Dick Swiveller is placed as a clerk in the Sampson Brass study, so as to keep an eye on him. There, he becomes friends with a badly-treated good-to-do, whom he nicknamed "the Marquise (the Marchioness)". For her part, the young Nell, after meeting characters, some of whom are kind and others obnoxious, manages to lead her grandfather to a peaceful and safe retreat, perhaps Tong, in Shropshire County. West Midlands. The trip, the bad weather, the privations, however, were right of her health, and the girl soon became ill.Kit, meanwhile, left without work, found a job at the excellent Mr and Mrs Garland he met randomly from the streets. He is visited by a mysterious gentleman, apparently single (a single gentleman), who wants to know what happened to Nell and the old man. The gentleman in question and Kit's mother then go looking for them. Along the way, they meet Quilp who takes Kit in awe and arranges to have him accused of theft and sentenced to deportation. Dick Swiveller, however, helped by his friend the Marquise, proves the innocence of the young man, and it is Quilp who, from now on, is chased, until, victim of an accident, he s' bogged down the Thames trying to escape his pursuers.The denouement approaches: a happy coincidence allows Mr Garland to learn where Nell and his grandfather are hiding; he goes off to find them in the company of Kit and the unmarried gentleman, the younger brother of the old man, we learn, therefore, the heroine's great-uncle. Alas, the girl has already succumbed, which denies the grandfather who, having lost his reason, spends his time sitting on the grave to moan and wait for her to come back. A few months later, he dies in turn. So ends the story of Nell Trent's antique store.