Fiction Books

PARIS AT THE BEGINNING OF 1792. Paris in 1792 is no longer what it was in 1789. In 1789, the old French society was still brilliant. The past endured beside the present. Neither names nor escutcheons, neither liveries nor places at court, had been suppressed. The aristocracy and the Revolution lived face to face. In 1792, the scene has changed. The Paris of the nobility is no longer in Paris, but at... more...

"Wae's me for Prince Chairlie."Old Scotch Song.It was a dark gloomy night in the year 1745. Huge clouds hung in heavy masses over the sky, ready to discharge their heavy burden at any moment. The thunder echoed and re-echoed with deafening crashes, as if the whole artillery of heaven were arrayed in mighty warfare, and shook even the giant crag on which the castle of Dunmorton was situated.... more...

I. THE SERGEANT OF THE GUARDS. My father, Andrew Peter Grineff, having served in his youth under Count Munich, left the army in 17—, with the grade of First Major. From that time he lived on his estate in the Principality of Simbirsk, where he married Avoditia, daughter of a poor noble in the neighborhood. Of nine children, the issue of this marriage, I was the only survivor. My brothers and sisters... more...

Very little was known about George, the Dalmatian, and the servants in the house of Angelo Beroviero, as well as the workmen of the latter's glass furnace, called him Zorzi, distrusted him, suggested that he was probably a heretic, and did not hide their suspicion that he was in love with the master's only daughter, Marietta. All these matters were against him, and people wondered why old... more...

Three o'clock on a warm June afternoon. The great heat has caused something like a purple haze to cloud over the deep blue of the sapphire sky. There is not one breath of wind to stir the leaves or cool the flushed faces of those whose duties call them out on this sultry June day. Away in the deep green heart of the broad land broad streams are flowing; in the very heart of the green woods there... more...

CHAPTER I. Among the many peculiarities which contribute to make New York unlike other cities is the construction of what may be called its social map. As in the puzzles used in teaching children geography, all the pieces are of different shapes, different sizes and different colours; but they fit neatly together in the compact whole though the lines which define each bit are distinctly visible,... more...

CHAPTER I. THE MARQUIS OF KINGSBURY.  When Mr. Lionel Trafford went into Parliament for the Borough of Wednesbury as an advanced Radical, it nearly broke the heart of his uncle, the old Marquis of Kingsbury. Among Tories of his day the Marquis had been hyper-Tory,—as were his friends, the Duke of Newcastle, who thought that a man should be allowed to do what he liked with his own, and the Marquis of... more...

CHAPTER I. TWO TROOPERS. "Ray, what would you do if some one were to leave you a fortune?" "Humph! Pay for the clothes I have on, I suppose," is the answer, half humorous, half wistful, as the interrogated party, the younger of two officers, glances down at his well-worn regimentals. "That's one reason I'm praying we may be sent to reinforce Crook up in the Sioux country.... more...

CHAPTER I: "THE RELIGION OF NUMA" [3] As, in the triumph of Christianity, the old religion lingered latest in the country, and died out at last as but paganism—the religion of the villagers, before the advance of the Christian Church; so, in an earlier century, it was in places remote from town-life that the older and purer forms of paganism itself had survived the longest. While, in Rome,... more...

[3] THE very finest flower of the same company—Aurelius with the gilded fasces borne before him, a crowd of exquisites, the empress Faustina herself, and all the elegant blue-stockings of the day, who maintained, people said, their private "sophists" to whisper philosophy into their ears winsomely as they performed the duties of the toilet—was assembled again a few months later, in a... more...