Barbarossa, and Other Tales

"I looked at Van Kuylen to see whether he could make anything of this strange speech, but he seemed so taken up with his work as not even to hear our conversation.

"'At last my father lost all patience, and when another suitor appeared who seemed to him worthy to carry away the jewel of beauty, since he was able to bid high for it, he decl...

"By the blood of our Lord," he exclaimed. "Who dares to say that shame threatens you so long as I can bear a sword, and lay a lance in rest?"

"How could I e'er deserve thee, By serving long years through; Though thou wert fain to own me, Most stedfast and most true. Or what though high exalted, Though glory were my me...

I therefore felt myself bound no longer to keep back my information, and gave him an exact account of my interview with his enemy. To my surprise it did not seem to produce on h...

"'But do look,' she said, in a tolerably calm voice, in which, however, I could detect a satirical tone; 'here is a picture by your Dutch painter of holy subjects, and on a larg...

When Frau Helena went upstairs, she found her guest--who had like herself only closed his eyes a short time before--fast asleep, and so she sat by his bedside contemplating the...

"One night towards the end of August I had a headache, having drunk more wine than usual, and the mosquitoes were more unconscionable than ever: so that I sat up in bed, and beg...

"Do you call that a prejudice?" said she, without looking at him. "Could you eat an apple that you had found lying in the dirt of the streets? You might wash it ten times over,...

Once more it was day: they saddled their horses, took leave of the bailiff, and rode to the gate of Mont Salvair, there to await the youthful Countess. They were not there long...

"What I wanted to ask," the man broke in, "is whether the foreign lady may have wine, and also a roast pigeon for which she longs. She will pay for it, she says, and indeed she...

"Stay," I remonstrated. "You ought to be very glad that one of us at least has the use of his five senses. The story of the pin is a mere trifle. Who knows whether she did not r...

We went down stairs and wandered arm-in-arm through quiet Behren Street, where my parents lived, into Frederick Street. When he got into the full tide of carriages and foot-pass...

"Thus she had already attained her thirty-second year when the feud between the two neighbouring towns broke out, and as she was a loyal daughter of Treviso, she so bitterly fel...

"Thus saying she led him to the seat in the window, and knelt before him, and he took her head in his two hands, and was never satiated with gazing at her, and kissing her brow,...

"Il Rosso had meanwhile risen, and was now standing with face averted from the picture, gazing hopelessly into the night. At these last words of his rival he vehemently shook hi...

"When I opened the door, however, I saw that my friend had not cautioned me for nothing, and that in a stable with brute beasts I should have found better manners and customs th...

"'I understand it all,' drily returned Van Kuylen, while lighting his clay-pipe with a large match; 'and as I have something to apologise for, and very much wish that the lady s...

"He pressed his hat on his brows, threw a glance around, and went off with a quick step. The girl said not a word, and as for me I was so bewildered by his passionate outburst,...

I had only intended to spend one day up in the mountains, and this one day grew into two weeks, which I found pass more rapidly in that high-perched ruinous nest on the confines...

"They will soon leave off," said the mother, "it will be too bad even for them. No human being is so hardened but what the hour comes when he hearkens if God warns him. But let...

"Do you know it?" he said to Garcinde. "With this little ring my father betrothed himself to my mother, and as in his case it betokened the firmest constancy--a constancy that w...