The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Entire Short Works of George Meredith
by George Meredith

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Title: The Short Works of George Meredith

Author: George Meredith

Last Updated: March 7, 2009
Release Date: October 13, 2006 [EBook #4499]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORT WORKS OF MEREDITH ***

Produced by David Widger

THE ENTIRE SHORT WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH

CONTENTS:

Farina
Case of General Ople
The Tale of Chloe
The House on the Beach
The Gentleman of Fifty
The Sentimentalists
Miscellaneous Prose

FARINA

By George Meredith

THE WHITE ROSE CLUB

In those lusty ages when the Kaisers lifted high the golden goblet of
Aachen, and drank, elbow upward, the green-eyed wine of old romance,
there lived, a bow-shot from the bones of the Eleven Thousand Virgins
and the Three Holy Kings, a prosperous Rhinelander, by name Gottlieb
Groschen, or, as it was sometimes ennobled, Gottlieb von Groschen;
than whom no wealthier merchant bartered for the glory of his ancient
mother-city, nor more honoured burgess swallowed impartially red juice
and white under the shadow of his own fig-tree.

Vine-hills, among the hottest sun-bibbers of the Rheingau, glistened
in the roll of Gottlieb's possessions; corn-acres below Cologne;
basalt-quarries about Linz; mineral-springs in Nassau, a legacy of the
Romans to the genius and enterprise of the first of German traders. He
could have bought up every hawking crag, owner and all, from Hatto's
Tower to Rheineck. Lore-ley, combing her yellow locks against the
night-cloud, beheld old Gottlieb's rafts endlessly stealing on the
moonlight through the iron pass she peoples above St. Goar. A wailful
host were the wives of his raftsmen widowed there by her watery music!

This worthy citizen of Cologne held vasty manuscript letters of the
Kaiser addressed to him:

'Dear Well-born son and Subject of mine, Gottlieb!' and he was easy
with the proudest princes of the Holy German Realm. For Gottlieb was
a money-lender and an honest man in one body. He laid out for the
plenteous harvests of usury, not pressing the seasons with to