BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF EDWARD STANLEY THE letters which are collected in this volume were written from abroad during the opening years of the nineteenth century, at three different periods: after the Peace of Amiens in 1802 and 1803, after the Peace of Paris in 1814, and in the year following Waterloo, June, 1816. The writer, Edward Stanley, was for thirty-three years an active country clergyman, and... more...

CHAPTER I. STORM AND SHIPWRECK. The Count of Monte-Cristo, with the beautiful Haydée clinging lovingly about his neck, her head pillowed upon his shoulder, stood on the deck of his superb yacht, the Alcyon, gazing at the fast-vanishing isle where he had left Maximilian Morrel and Valentine de Villefort. It was just daybreak, but by the faint glimmering light he could plainly distinguish the figures of... more...

How young Denis kept guard. His Most Christian Majesty King Francis the First had a great preference for his Palace of Fontainebleau among the many places of residence from which he could choose, and it is interesting to glance into that magnificent palace on a certain afternoon in the year 151—. In a special apartment, from which direct access could be obtained to the guard chamber, where a... more...

ALPHONSE DAUDET. Alphonse Daudet is one of the most richly gifted of modern French novelists and one of the most artistic; he is perhaps the most delightful; and he is certainly the most fortunate. In his own country earlier than any of his contemporaries he saw his stories attain to the very wide circulation that brings both celebrity and wealth. Beyond the borders of his own language he swiftly won a... more...

PREFACE.   The long abandoned purpose, of which the following pages begin some attempt at fulfilment, has been resumed at the request of a young English governess, that I would write some pieces of history which her pupils could gather some good out of;—the fruit of historical documents placed by modern educational systems at her disposal, being to them labour only, and sorrow. What else may be said... more...

CHAPTER I. THE LITTLE COLOUR GRINDER T was a bright morning of early April, many hundred years ago; and through all the fields and meadows of Normandy the violets and cuckoo-buds were just beginning to peep through the tender green of the young grass. The rows of tall poplar-trees that everywhere, instead of fences, served to mark off the farms of the country folk, waved in thespring wind like great,... more...

CHAPTER XLIX. LOUIS XIV. AND HIS COURT. Louis XIV. reigned everywhere, over his people, over his age, often over Europe; but nowhere did he reign so completely as over his court. Never were the wishes, the defects, and the vices of a man so completely a law to other men as at the court of Louis XIV. during the whole period of his long life. When near to him, in the palace of Versailles, men lived, and... more...

A DAY OF SPLEEN. Five o'clock in the afternoon. Rain ever since the morning, a gray sky, so low that one can touch it with one's umbrella, dirty weather, puddles, mud, nothing but mud, in thick pools, in gleaming streaks along the edge of the sidewalks, driven back in vain by automatic sweepers, sweepers with handkerchiefs tied over their heads, and carted away on enormous tumbrils which... more...

CHAPTER I. "Let the boy go to Paris," exclaimed our guest, Roland Belloc. "I warrant he'll find a path that will lead him to fortune." "He is young," said my father doubtfully. "He will be killed," cried my mother, while I stood upright against the wall and looked at Roland gratefully. It was in 1650, in the days of the Regency, and all France was in an uproar. Our... more...

CHAPTER XXVIII. FRANCIS I. AND CHARLES V. The closer the study and the wider the contemplation a Frenchman bestows upon his country's history, the deeper will be his feelings of patriotic pride, dashed with a tinge of sadness. France, in respect of her national unity, is the most ancient amongst the states of Christian Europe. During her long existence she has passed through very different... more...