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the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team from imagesgenerously made available by the Bibliotheque nationale de France(BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr.
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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 andIntrigues of an Arab Don Juan, done into Englishby ALFRED ALLINSON, and embellished with Sevenfine Engravings by THEVENIN, after Drawings byBAZEILHAC.
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 mostoriginal and philosophic work of the last twentyyears. This work will be sumptuously illustratedby leading French Artists. (In Preparation.)
[Illustration: Fin d'une série de documents en couleur.]
[Illustration: the author.]
[Illustration]
The truth, the bitter truth.
Oh, sons and brothers, oh, poets
When the thing exists, speak the word.
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 Iam a realist and not an idealist, and for that I beg the reader a thousandpardons. 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 whopassed 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 notfind a "Treatise on Morality". Here are only the simple and pastoral lovesof a poor and obscure village priest. An idyll in the shade of theparsonage limes and under the motionless eye of the weather-cock on thebelfry.
If then you come across any word which offends your chaste ears, anypicture which distresses your modest eye, blame only your own curiosity.
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.