Chapter I Mushrooms "La célébrité est comme le feu, qui brûle de près et illumine de loin." Under a glorious sky, in the year 1869, Paris gathered to rejoice in the centenary of the birth of the First Napoleon. A gathering this of mushroom nobility, soldiery and diplomacy, to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the greatest mushroom that ever sprang to life in the hotbed of internecine strife. "Adventurers... more...

CHAPTER I IN THE CITY OF THE WINDS The Ebro, as all the world knows--or will pretend to know, being an ignorant and vain world--runs through the city of Saragossa. It is a river, moreover, which should be accorded the sympathy of this generation, for it is at once rapid and shallow. On one side it is bordered by the wall of the city. The left bank is low and sandy, liable to flood; a haunt of lizards in the summer, of frogs in winter-time. The... more...