The Project Gutenberg EBook of Novelas Cortas, by Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Novelas Cortas

Author: Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

Editor: W.F. Giese

Release Date: April 4, 2005 [EBook #15532]

Language: English and Spanish

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOVELAS CORTAS ***

Produced by Stan Goodman, Miranda van de Heijning, Renald
Levesque and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

[Illustration: From a photograph]

NOVELAS CORTAS

BY

DON PEDRO A. DE ALARCON
MEMBER OF THE SPANISH ACADEMY

EDITED WITH NOTES AND VOCABULARY

BY

W.F. GIESE, A.M.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

GINN AND COMPANY
BOSTON-NEW YORK-CHICAGO-LONDON
ATLANTA-DALLAS-COLUMBUS-SAN FRANCISCO

PREFACE

The following stories from Alarcon are offered to the student of Spanish
in the belief that the easy style, the interest of the narrative, and
the incidental sidelights that they throw on Spanish life and history
will make the book a welcome one in the earlier stages of study.

The stories have been very fully annotated, and nothing that seemed to
offer any real difficulty has been passed over. All proper names have
been explained, with the exception of a few too well known or too
insignificant to justify comment. The notes are further reenforced by an
_Idiomatic Commentary_, to be studied in connection with the text. By
frequent reviews and by oral drill in translating the idioms from either
language to the other, with changes of person, tense, etc., wherever
possible, the Commentary should enable the student to attain to a real
mastery of the idioms that are here tabulated.

Easy exercises for translation into Spanish are added. They are based on
very short passages from the text, and are so graded and arranged as to
afford a systematic review of the elements of grammar, a drill which
beginners always need.

The vocabulary, while regist