This tale the sacristan of the church of St. Eulalie at Neuville d’Aumont told me, as we sat under the arbor of the White Horse, one fine summer evening, drinking a bottle of old wine to the health of the dead man, now very much at his ease, whom that very morning he had borne […]

(Translator: Alfred Allinson) THE WHICH WAS SHOWED IN A TEMPLE AND OF SUNDRY LIMNINGS OF A RIGHT PACIFIC AND AMOROUS SORT THE WHICH THE SAGE PHILEMON HAD HANGED IN HIS LIBRARIE AND OF A NOBLE PORTRAITURE OF THE POET HOMER THE WHICH THE AFORESAID PHILEMON DID PRIZE ABOVE ALL OTHER LIMNINGS PHILEMON was used to […]

(Translator: Alfred Allinson) ON January 1st, in the forenoon, the good M. Chanterelle sallied out on foot from his hotel in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. He felt the cold and was a poor walker; so it was a real penance to him to face the chilly air and the bleak streets which were full of half-melted […]

(Translator: Alfred Allinson) MY good master, M. l’Abbe Coignard, had taken me with him to sup with one of his old fellow-students, who lodged in a garret in the Rue Git-le-Cour. Our host, a Premonstratensian Father of much learning and a fine Theologian, had fallen out with the Prior of his House for having writ […]

(Translator: Alfred Allinson) SATAN lay in his bed with the flaming curtains. The physicians and apothecaries of Hell, finding their patient had a white tongue, inferred he was suffering from a weakness of the stomach and prescribed a diet at once light and nourishing. Satan swore he had no appetite for aught but a certain […]

(Translator: Alfred Allinson) THE Parisians were far from loving the English and found it hard to put up with them. When, after the obsequies of the late King Charles VI, the Duke of Bedford had the sword of the King of France borne before him, the people murmured. But what cannot be cured must be […]

(Translator: Alfred Allinson) ONE day the Capuchin, Brother Jean Chavaray, meeting my good master the Abbe Coign-ard in the cloister of “The Innocents,” fell into talk with him of the Brother Olivier Maillard, whose sermons, edifying and macaronic, he had lately been reading. “There are good bits to be found in these sermons,” said the […]

(Translator: Alfred Allinson) IN the days of King Louis XI there lived at Paris, in a matted chamber, a citizen dame called Violante, who was comely and well-liking in all her person. She had so bright a face that Master Jacques Tribouillard, doctor in law and a renowned cosmographer, who was often a visitor at […]

(Translator: D. B. Stewart) CHAPTER I THE strangest, the most varied, the most erroneous opinions have been expressed with regard to the famous individual commonly known as Bluebeard. None, perhaps, was less tenable than that which made of this gentleman a personification of the Sun. For this is what a certain school of comparative mythology […]

(Translator: Alfred Allinson) The Emperor Charlemagne and his twelve peers, having taken the palmer’s staff at Saint-Denis, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They prostrated themselves before the tomb of Our Lord, and sat in the thirteen chairs of the great hall wherein Jesus Christ and his Apostles met together to celebrate the blessed sacrifice of […]

(Translator: Alfred Allinson) I LENT, of the year 1429, presented a strange marvel of the Calendar, a conjunction that moved the admiration not only of the common crowd of the Faithful, but eke of Clerks, well learned in Arithmetic. For Astronomy, mother of the Calendar, was Christian in those days. In 1429 Good Friday fell […]

HONEY-BEE By Anatole France A Translation By Mrs. John Lane TO H. B. H. DEAR AND LIFE-LONG FRIEND INTRODUCTION It is an honour, but, also, a great responsibility, to introduce through the dangerous medium of a translation one of the most distinguished writers of our time, and, probably, the greatest living master of style, to […]

(Translator: Mrs. John Lane) TO JEAN PSICHARI I had left Paris late in the evening, and I spent a long, silent and snowy night in the corner of the railway carriage. I waited six mortal hours at X——, and the next afternoon I found nothing better than a farm-waggon to take me to Artigues. The […]

(Translator: Mrs. John Lane) TO ARY RENAN I. Laeta Acilia lived in Marseilles during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius. She had been married for several years to a Roman noble named Helvius, but she had no children, though she longed passionately to become a mother. One day as she went to the temple to […]

(Translator: Mrs. John Lane) TO SAMUEL POZZI Dr. N—— placed his coffee-cup on the mantelpiece, threw his cigar into the fire, and said to me: “My dear friend, you recently told me of the strange suicide of a woman tortured by terror and remorse. Her nature was fine and she was exquisitely cultivated. Being suspected […]

(Translator: Mrs. John Lane) TO GILBERT AUGUSTIN-THIERRY I have, as everybody knows, devoted my whole life to Egyptian archaeology. I should be very ungrateful to my country, to science, and to my-self, if I regretted the profession to which I was called. In my early youth and which I have followed with honour these forty […]

(Translator: Mrs. John Lane) I. In those days Balthasar, whom the Greeks called Saracin, reigned in Ethiopia. He was black, but comely of countenance. He had a simple soul and a generous heart The third year of his reign, which was the twenty-second of his age, he left his dominions on a visit to Balkis, […]

(Translator: Mrs. John Lane) TO JULES LEMAITRE In a village of the Bocage I once knew a cure, a holy man who denied himself every indulgence and who cheerfully practised the virtue of renunciation, and knew no joy but that of sacrifice. In his garden he cultivated fruit-trees, vegetables and medicinal plants, but fearing beauty […]

(Translator: Alfred Allinson) TO HENRY GAUTHIER-VILLARS Done Marie d’Avalos, l’une des belles princesses du païs, mariée avec le prince de Venouse, laquelle s’estant enamourachée du comte d’Andriane, l’un des beaux princes du païs aussy, et s’estans tous deux concertez à la jouissance et le mari l’ayant descouverte … les fit tous deux massacrer par gens […]

(Translator: Alfred Allinson) TO ARMAND GENEST Quand, simple citoyen, soldat d’un peuple libre, Aux bords de l’Éridan, de l’Adige et du Tibre, Foudroyant tour à tour quelques tyrans pervers, Des nations en pleurs, sa main brisait les fers…. (Marie-Joseph Chénier, La Promenade.)[1] Napoléon, après son expédition de Livourne, se rendant à Florence, coùcha à San […]