Project Gutenberg's Mare Nostrum (Our Sea), by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

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Title: Mare Nostrum (Our Sea)
A Novel

Author: Vicente Blasco Ibanez

Release Date: March 24, 2004 [EBook #11697]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Mare Nostrum

(_OUR SEA_)

A Novel

By

Vicente Blasco Ibanez

AUTHOR OF

"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,"
"The Shadow of the Cathedral,"
"Blood and Sand,"
"La Bodega," etc.

Authorized translation from the Spanish by Charlotte Brewster Jordan

Translator of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse"

1919

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I CAPTAIN ULYSSES FERRAGUT

CHAPTER II MATER AMPHITRITE

CHAPTER III PATER OCEANUS

CHAPTER IV FREYA

CHAPTER V THE AQUARIUM OF NAPLES

CHAPTER VI THE WILES OF CIRCE

CHAPTER VII THE SIN OF ULYSSES

CHAPTER VIII THE YOUNG TELEMACHUS

CHAPTER IX THE ENCOUNTER AT MARSEILLES

CHAPTER X IN BARCELONA

CHAPTER XI "FAREWELL, I AM GOING TO DIE"

CHAPTER XII AHPHITRITE!... AMPHITRITE!

Mare Nostrum

CHAPTER I

CAPTAIN ULYSSES FERRAGUT

His first gallantries were with an empress. He was ten years old, and
the empress six hundred.

His father, Don Esteban Ferragut--third quota of the College of
Notaries--had always had a great admiration for the things of the past.
He lived near the cathedral, and on Sundays and holy days, instead of
following the faithful to witness the pompous ceremonials presided over
by the cardinal-archbishop, used to betake himself with his wife and
son to hear mass in _San Juan del Hospital_,--a little church sparsely
attended the rest of the week.

The notary, who had read Walter Scott in his youth, used to gaze on the
old and turreted walls surrounding the church, and feel something of
the bard's thrills about his own, his native land. The Middle Ages was
the period in which he would have liked to have lived. And as he trod
the flagging of the _Hospitolarios_, good Don Esteban, little, chubby,
and