The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ten Tales, by Francois Coppee

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Title: Ten Tales

Author: Francois Coppee

Contributor: Brander Matthews

Illustrator: Albert E. Sterner

Translator: Warren Walter Learned

Release Date: January 15, 2007 [EBook #20380]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TEN TALES ***

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[Illustration: FRANCOIS COPPEE.]

FROM THE FRENCH

Ten Tales

By

Francois Coppee

_Translated by WALTER LEARNED, with fifty pen-and-ink drawings
by ALBERT E. STERNER, and an introduction by BRANDER MATTHEWS_

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1891

Copyright, 1890, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

_All rights reserved._

CONTENTS.

THE CAPTAIN'S VICES

TWO CLOWNS

A VOLUNTARY DEATH

A DRAMATIC FUNERAL

THE SUBSTITUTE

AT TABLE

AN ACCIDENT

THE SABOTS OF LITTLE WOLFF

THE FOSTER SISTER

MY FRIEND MEURTRIER

INTRODUCTION.

The _conte_ is a form of fiction in which the French have always
delighted and in which they have always excelled, from the days of the
_jongleurs_ and the _trouveres_, past the periods of La Fontaine and
Voltaire, down to the present. The _conte_ is a tale, something more
than a sketch, it may be, and something less than a short story. In
verse it is at times but a mere rhymed anecdote, or it may attain almost
to the direct swiftness of a ballad. The _Canterbury Tales_ are
_contes_, most of them, if not all; and so are some of the _Tales of a
Wayside Inn_. The free-and-easy tales of Prior were written in imitation
of the French _conte en vers_; and that, likewise, was the model of more
than one of the lively narrative poems of Mr. Austin Dobson.

No one has succeeded more abundantly in the _conte en vers_ than M.
Coppee. Where was there ever anything better of its kind than _L'Enfant
de la Balle?_--that gentle portrait of the Infant Phenomenon, framed in
a chain of occasional gibes at the sordid ways of theatrical managers
and at their hostility towards poetic plays. Where is there anything of