Bulgaria

Matilde Serao (1856-1927)Matilde Serao was born at Patras, Greece, in 1856, and was the most distinguished of the older generation of modern Italian women writers. She began her literary career as a follower of...

The smothering canopy was then lowered, but not so noiselessly as I had seen it lowered. When I mentioned this to the Sub-prefect, his answer, simple as it was, had a terrible significance, “My...

Away we went through the streets, the Sub-prefect cross-examining and congratulating me in the same breath as we marched at the head of our formidable posse comitatus. Sentinels were placed at the back and...

To some men the means of escape which I had discovered might have seemed difficult and dangerous enough—to me the prospect of slipping down the pipe into the street did not suggest even a...

But ere long all thought was again suspended by the sight of the mur-derous canopy moving once more. After it had remained on the bed— as nearly as I could guess—about ten minutes, it...

Without stopping to draw my breath, without wiping the cold sweat from my face, I rose instantly on my knees to watch the bed-top. I was literally spellbound by it. If I had heard...

Looking for what?Good God! the man had pulled his hat down on his brows! No! the hat itself was gone! Where was the conical crown? Where the feathers —three white, two green? Not there!...

This picture put a kind of constraint upon me to look upward too— at the top of the bed. It was a gloomy and not an interesting object, and I looked back at the...

I raised myself on my elbow, and looked about the room—which was brightened by a lovely moonlight pouring straight through the window—to see if it contained any pictures or ornaments that I could at...

The giddiness left me, and I began to feel a little like a reasonable being again. My first thought was of the risk of sleeping all night in a gambling-house; my second, of the...