Project Gutenberg's The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard, by Anatole France

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Title: The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard
1920

Author: Anatole France

Editor: James Lewis May And Bernard Miall

Translator: D. B. Stewart

Release Date: May 9, 2008 [EBook #25411]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN WIVES OF BLUEBEARD ***

Produced by David Widger

THE SEVEN WIVES OF BLUEBEARD & OTHER MARVELLOUS TALES

By Anatole France

Edited By James Lewis May And Bernard Miall

Translated by D. B. Stewart

John Lane Company MCMXX

THE SEVEN WIVES OF BLUEBEARD

CHAPTER I

THE strangest, the most varied, the most erroneous opinions have
been expressed with regard to the famous individual commonly known as
Bluebeard. None, perhaps, was less tenable than that which made of
this gentleman a personification of the Sun. For this is what a certain
school of comparative mythology set itself to do, some forty years ago.
It informed the world that the seven wives of Bluebeard were the Dawns,
and that his two brothers-in-law were the morning and the evening
Twilight, identifying them with the Dioscuri, who delivered Helena when
she was rapt away by Theseus. We must remind those readers who may
feel tempted to believe this that in 1817 a learned librarian of Agen,
Jean-Baptiste Peres, demonstrated, in a highly plausible manner, that
Napoleon had never existed, and that the story of this supposed great
captain was nothing but a solar myth. Despite the most ingenious
diversions of the wits, we cannot possibly doubt that Bluebeard and
Napoleon did both actually exist.

An hypothesis no better founded is that which Consists in identifying
Bluebeard with the Marshal de Rais, who was strangled by the arm of
the Law above the bridges of Nantes on 26th of October, 1440. Without
inquiring, with M. Salomon Reinach, whether the Marshal committed the
crimes for which he was condemned, or whether his wealth, coveted by a
greedy prince, did not in some degree contribute to his undoing, there
is nothing in his life that resembles what we find in Bluebeard's;
this alone is enough to prevent our co