Category: Science-Fiction & Fantasy

The Cream of the Jest: A comedy of evasions

“_Le pays où je voulais aller, tu m’y as mené en songe, cette nuit, et tu étais belle ... ah! que tu étais belle!... Mais, comme je n’ai aimé que ton ombre, tu me dispenseras, chère tête, de remercier ta réalité._”

Chapters

10. Part 10

As the door closed upon Cromwell’s burly figure, “No, be very careful not to touch me,” Kennaston implored. “The dream must last till I have found out how through your aid, Etta...

9. Part 9

SO much for what Kennaston termed his “serious reading” in chance-opened pages of the past. There were other dreams quite different in nature, which seemed, rather, to fulfil th...

4. Part 4

Then one propitious morning an indignant gentlewoman in Brooklyn wrote to _The New York Sphere_ a letter which was duly printed in that journal’s widely circulated Sunday supple...

2. Part 2

Ettarre stood between the bed-curtains, which were green hangings worked with birds and beasts of the field, each in his proper colors. The girl was robed in white; and upon her...

11. Part 11

“Well! it was scarcely heaven’s name that was invoked there, if old tales are to be trusted. Traditionally, the Sabbat was a meeting attended by all witches in satisfactory diab...

5. Part 5

“That I am of smirched repute, madam, I lack both grounds and inclination to deny. Yet I am not so through choice. Believe me, I am innately of wellnigh ducal disposition; and b...

8. Part 8

Meanwhile, men were to worry, somehow, through to-day—doing as infrequent evil as they conveniently could, exercising as much bravery and honesty and benevolence as they happene...

7. Part 7

This prefigured a crowned woman, in bright parti-colored garments of white and red and yellow, under a black mantle embroidered with small sparkling stars. Upon the woman’s fore...

6. Part 6

There was, be it repeated, no continuity in these dreams save that Ettarre was in each of them; that alone they had in common: but each dream conformed to certain general laws....

3. Part 3

Such habits are not wholly incompatible with wisdom or generosity, and the devil’s advocate would not advance them against their possessor’s canonization; none the less, in ever...

1. Part 1

“_Le pays où je voulais aller, tu m’y as mené en songe, cette nuit, et tu étais belle ... ah! que tu étais belle!... Mais, comme je n’ai aimé que ton ombre, tu me dispenseras, c...

12. Part 12

Kennaston had never spoken to her concerning the sigil. Indeed, I do not well see how he could have dared to do so, in view of her attitude in a world so opulent in insane asylu...