Comedies and Errors

“You are trying to make me angry, aren’t you? But I refuse to leave you till you have admitted that you are wrong,” she persisted. “It’s an outrageous slander. Monsieur Long (th...

If it was surprising to see so old a man at a baccarat table, it was still more surprising to see just this sort of man. He looked like anything in the world, rather than a gamb...

I was stammering out some apology, but she stopped me. “No, no. It isn’t your fault. I’m not crying. It’s all right. I meant I was never a girl, because I was married at eightee...

And then, suddenly, the salita took a turn, and broadened into a small piazza. At one hand there was a sheer terrace, dropping to tiled roofs twenty feet below; and hence one go...

It carried, at any rate, as far as a low thatched farm-house, a hundred yards down the road. Presently a man and a woman came out of the farm-house, gazed for an instant in my d...

“Well, then, to employ that somewhat homely proverbial expression,” she went on, “the fat got into the fire at the Bishop’s palace. Mrs. Rawley was kind enough to write and ask...

Every one who knew Rome fifteen or twenty years ago must remember Miss Belmont. She lived in the Palazzo Sebastiani, a merry little old Englishwoman, the business, the passion,...

“I can tell you at once,” said she, “that our King is the frankest egotist in two hemispheres. You have learned to think of him as original and romantic? No; he is simply intens...

I remember quite clearly the day when I first heard it; quite clearly, though it was more—oh, more than five-and-twenty years ago, and the days that went before and came after i...

The Swiss, flourishing his staff of office, marshalled me (I can’t use a less imposing word for the ceremony) slowly, solemnly, across a courtyard, and up a great stone staircas...

P’tit-Bleu stood with her hands on her hips, her arms a-kimbo, her head thrown impudently back, her eyes sparkling mischievously, her lips curling in a perpetual play of smiles,...

Will walked about in a state of acute misery. What could it be? What could have happened? What could this painter, this George Aymer, this thorough-paced rascal with the beautif...

Probably my joy was somewhat tempered by confusion, to think that my little equivocation on the subject of my age had been discovered. As I looked up from the cake to its giver,...

“I took the curtsey as a tribute to my Oriental magnificence,” he confessed. “Field doesn’t sound like an especially patrician name. I’d give anything to discover who you are. C...

“Anyhow, the nobility of Monterosso, quite frankly hating Queen Anéli, give her every bad name they can discover in their vocabularies; and the populace, the mob, without stoppi...

“You know perfectly well that that’s a preposterous subterfuge,” said she. “You’ve got something on your mind. You’re keeping something back.” She paused for a second; then, sof...

He stayed with us for several months—from the beginning of November till February or March, I think—and during that period I saw him very nearly every day, and heard him accompl...

“That’s all very well. Besides, I spoke in jest. But there are limits. And it’s I who am responsible. I’m the Constable of Bellefontaine. Her trespassing appears to be habitual,...

You see, when he began life, Theodore IV. was simply Prince Theodore Pavelovitch, the younger son of a nephew of the reigning Krol, Paul III,; and nobody dimly dreamed that he w...

“I’m extremely glad you approve of it. Castle Ennui is the Bastille of modern life. It is built of prunes and prisms; it has its outer court of Convention, and its inner court o...

There is a bothersome little provision in the Constitution of Monterosso to the effect that the Sovereign may not cross the frontiers of his dominions, no matter for how brief a...