BEFORE THE CURTAIN As the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating,
This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset. THE TRUMPET-MAJOR being a tale of the Trumpet-Major, John Loveday, a soldier in the war with Buonaparte, and Robert, his brother, first mate in the Merchant Service. by Thomas Hardy PREFACE The present tale is founded more largely on testimony–oral and written–than any other in
Produced by Dagny THE COUNTRY DOCTOR BY HONORE DE BALZAC Translated by Ellen Marriage and Clara Bell “For a wounded heart–shadow and silence.” To my Mother INTRODUCTION In hardly any of his books, with the possible exception of /Eugenie Grandet/, does Balzac seem to have taken a greater interest than in /Le Medecin de Campagne/;
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas Chapter 1 Marseilles — The Arrival. On the 24th of February, 1815, the look-out at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the Pharaon from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples. As usual, a pilot put off immediately, and rounding the Chateau d’If, got on board the vessel between
