TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF HECTOR FRANCE

[Illustration:  Debut d’une serie de documents en couleur.]

Love is a familiar; love is a devil; there is no evil angel but love.  Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an excellent strength; yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit.

  Love’s Labour Lost.

With an engraved portrait of the Author

Other Works in English

By
Hector France

Mansour’s Chastisement, the Loves and
Intrigues of an Arab Don Juan, done into English
by Alfred ALLINSON, and embellished with Seven
fine Engravings by Thevenin, after Drawings by
BAZEILHAC.

Musk, Hashish and Blood, with Twenty-One
Engravings by Paul Avril. (In the Press.)

The Attack on the Brothels, A Realistic
Account of the Civilizing of “Barbarians”.  With
Illustrations. (In Hand.)

The Daughter of the Christ; The most original and philosophic work of the last twenty years.  This work will be sumptuously illustrated by leading French Artists. (In Preparation.)

[Illustration:  Fin d’une serie de documents en couleur.]

[Illustration:  the author.]

[Illustration]

TO THE READER

  The truth, the bitter truth.

  Danton.

  Oh, sons and brothers, oh, poets
  When the thing exists, speak the word.

  V. Hugo.

I do not assert that all the personages in this story are models of virtue.  To some of them has been given a part which severe morality reproves.  But I am a realist and not an idealist, and for that I beg the reader a thousand pardons.  I have tried to paint what I saw and not that of which I dreamed.  If my figures are not chaste, the fault is not mine, but of those who passed before me and whose features I sketched as my pen ran on.

You are warned therefore, Madam, that when you open this book, you will not find a “Treatise on Morality”.  Here are only the simple and pastoral loves of a poor and obscure village priest.  An idyll in the shade of the parsonage limes and under the motionless eye of the weather-cock on the belfry.

If then you come across any word which offends your chaste ears, any picture which distresses your modest eye, blame only your own curiosity.

Hector France.

LIST OF CHAPTERS.

Unto the pure all things are pure:  but unto them that are Defiled and Unbelieving is nothing pure:  but even their mind and conscience is Defiled.  They profess that they know God; but in Works they Deny Him, being Abominable and Disobedient, and unto every good work Reprobate.

  St. Paul.