The readers have spoken. In a remarkably close race in which 154 subscribers voted, the results were as follows:

• 16% Pensées

• 23% History of Florence

• 23% History of Freedom of Thought

• 12% De Bello Gallico

• 27% Discourses on Livy

Dedication

Niccolò Machiavelli to Zanobi Buondelmonte
and Cosimo Rucellai, Greeting

With this I send you a gift which, if it bears no proportion to the extent of the obligations which I owe you, is nevertheless the best that I am able to offer to you; for I have endeavored to embody in it all that long experience and assiduous research have taught me of the affairs of the world. And as neither yourselves nor any one else can ask more than that of me, you cannot complain that I have not given you more; though you may well complain of my lack of talent when my arguments are poor, and of the fallacies of my judgment on account of the errors into which I have doubtless fallen many times. This being so, however, I know not which of us has the greater right to complain: I, that you should have forced me to write what I should never have attempted of my own accord, or you, that I should have written without giving you cause to be satisfied.

Accept it, then, as one accepts whatever comes from friends, looking rather to the intention of him who gives, than to the thing offered. And believe me, that I feel a satisfaction in this, that, even if I have often erred in the course of this work, I have assuredly made no mistake in having chosen you above all other friends to whom to dedicate these discourses. In doing this, I give some proof of gratitude, although I may seem to have departed from the ordinary usage of writers, who generally dedicate their works to some prince; and, blinded by ambition or avarice, praise him for all the virtuous qualities he has not, instead of censuring him for his real vices, whilst I, to avoid this fault, do not address myself to such as are princes, but to those who by their infinite good qualities are worthy to be such; not to those who could load me with honors, rank, and wealth, but rather to those who have the desire to do so, but have not the power. For to judge rightly, men should esteem rather those who are, and not those who can be generous; and those who would know how to govern states, rather than those who have the right to govern, but lack the knowledge.

For this reason have historians praised Hiero of Syracuse, a mere private citizen, more than Perseus of Macedon, monarch though he was; for Hiero only lacked a principality to be a prince, whilst the other had nothing of the king except the diadem. Be it good or bad, however, you wanted this work, and such as it is I send it to you; and should you continue in the belief that my opinions are acceptable to you, I shall not fail to continue to examine this history, as I promised you in the beginning of it. Farewell!

CÁDIZ by Benito Pérez Galdós is this week’s new translation. It is the eighth of the first series of the Episodios Nacionales and was translated from the original Spanish by Vox Day. The ebooks have already gone out to the subscribers. It’s now available on Amazon for Kindle, KU, and audiobook.

AN UNEXPECTED RIVAL

The eighth volume of the Episodios Nacionales — the great historical novel cycle of Spain — Cádiz carries Gabriel Araceli into the besieged island city where Spain’s first constitution is being born, and where a drawing-room intrigue will end in blood on the sand.

It is 1810, and Cádiz is the last free city in Spain. While French cannon fire arcs across the bay and the newly convened Cortes debates sovereignty, freedom of the press, and the abolition of feudal lordships, Gabriel finds himself entangled in a world of tertulias and domestic politics more dangerous than any battlefield. The condesa Amaranta needs his help to recover her secret daughter, Inés, from the household of the formidable doña María de Rumblar — a Catholic absolutist matriarch who has imprisoned the girl behind the walls of a household so rigidly governed it resembles a convent. To reach Inés, Gabriel must navigate a social minefield: the effusive doña Flora, whose speeches are torrents of self-interruption and genuine warmth; the feckless young Count Don Diego, who is supposed to marry Inés for family advantage; and the absurd Don Pedro del Congosto, commander of a militia so magnificently incompetent that its members are named after parrots and peacocks.

At the centre of everything is Lord Gray, a brilliant, melancholic Englishman who delivers dazzling speeches against his own country, joins the beggars at the Carmen convent for the philosophical experience, and quotes Byron while systematically destroying the people around him. Gabriel believes Lord Gray is pursuing Inés. He is wrong. The truth, when it comes, is worse than anything Gabriel has imagined.

About the Series

The Episodios Nacionales is a cycle of forty-six historical novels tracing the history of Spain from the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 through the Restoration of the 1870s. Written between 1872 and 1912, the cycle is one of the supreme achievements of European fiction, a work that stands with Balzac’s Comédie Humaine as a panoramic portrait of an entire nation across a century of upheaval. This is the first English translation of the eighth volume.

About the author. Benito Pérez Galdós (1843–1920) is widely regarded as the greatest Spanish novelist since Cervantes. Over four decades, he produced the Episodios Nacionales, one of the most incredible accomplishments of world literature ever written. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times.

Excerpt

We arrived at the house, which stood in the calle de la Amargura and was handsome in appearance. The De Leiva family lived on the upper floor and the Rumblars on the principal, where doña María, owing to the recent rheumatism of her illustrious kinswoman, exercised the office of supreme chief and director of the family with all the amplitude that her character demanded. As we entered and began to climb, a distant, solemn murmur of prayers checked our steps, and Don Diego said:

“Let us wait here; they are saying the rosary with Ostolaza, Tenreyro, and Don Paco. You already know the last of these. The others are deputies who come here every evening.”

While we waited I observed the house, which was cheerful and pretty like all the houses of Cádiz. Spacious glass doors enclosed the corridor around the courtyard, and on the walls one could not see a palm’s breadth of surface unoccupied by paintings in oil, representing diverse subjects, the sacred confounded indiscriminately with the profane. At length, the prayers concluded, I had the honour of entering the drawing room, where doña María sat with her two girls, Don Paco, and three other gentlemen unknown to me. The condesa de Rumblar received me with a certain ceremonious courtesy, somewhat stiff but nonetheless affable, showing me a benevolence that descended from on high, generous and compassionate by turns. The girls, observing the ritual to which they were accustomed, made me a curtsey without parting their lips. Don Paco, as pedantic in Cádiz as he had been in Bailén, paid me grandiloquent compliments, and the remaining personages regarded me with suspicious reserve, showing me no civility beyond a few rigid inclinations of the head.

“You have arrived late for the rosary,” said doña María to Don Diego, after indicating a seat to me.

“But did I not tell you,” the young man replied, “that I was saying it this afternoon at the Carmen Calzado? I have just come from there, together with Gabriel, who was returning from confession with Father Pedro Advíncula.”

“What an excellent man Father Pedro Advíncula is!” doña María said to me in a tone of the highest commendation.

“There is not his equal in all Cádiz,” I replied, “especially in the matter of the confessional. And in the pulpit! And who could surpass him at singing an epistle?”

“It is true.”

“I am captivated to hear him sing the epistle,” Don Diego repeated.

“I am delighted,” doña María said to me, “by the great advances you have made in your career.”

I bowed before the matron with the profoundest respect.

“Every person of rectitude and honour, devoted to the good service of religion and the king,” she continued, “cannot fail to find a reward for his labours. I much regretted that my son did not remain in the army somewhat longer.”

“Gabriel and I worked hard enough at the bridge of Herrumblar,” said Don Diego. “In truth, dear mother, had it not been for us… The fact is we made a movement with our squadron in such terms that… do you remember, Gabriel? Frankly, had it not been for us…”

“Hold your tongue, vainglorious boy,” said doña María. “This gentleman has done more than you and does not boast of it. Self-praise is a low and ignoble thing, unworthy of persons well born. Will Señor Don Gabriel be staying long in Cádiz?”

“Until the siege is over, Señora. After that I intend to lay down my arms and pursue my burning vocation, which impels me toward a career in the Church.”

“I praise your resolution greatly, and there are illustrious saints in heaven who were first valiant soldiers, such as Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Sebastian, Saint Ferdinand, Saint Louis, and others.”

“Have you studied theology?” one of the gentlemen present asked me.

“My campaign valise contains nothing but works of theology, and whenever I find a moment’s leisure between one battle and the next, I gorge myself on reading in a subject which to me is more delightful than the finest novels. The melancholy hours of guard duty afford me space and time for my meditations.”

“Asunción, Presentación,” said doña María with enthusiasm, “here you have an example that should astonish and inspire you.”

Asunción and Presentación, hearing that I was a species of saint, regarded me with wide-eyed wonder. I looked at them in return. They were so pretty, prettier even than at Bailén; yet crushed beneath the exaggerated weight of maternal authority, their beautiful eyes were full of sadness. Without their mother noticing, they exchanged a few words in whispers.

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Since the last book we did was a novel, we’re going to go with something non-fiction this time. Here are some of the suggestions made by readers yesterday, along with another option or two.

In other news, the Byron AI campaign is proceeding well. If you haven’t backed it yet, definitely consider doing so, because with the way the world of AI is heading, we’re going to need an independent one for a lot more than just writing epic fantasy.

As a general rule, we prefer to choose our daily excerpt from books that either Castalia Library or Castalia House publishes, a list that is growing rapidly thanks to all of the various translations that we’ve been publishing.

So, here is a chance to throw out your idea for what book we should publish an excerpt next. Perhaps Machiavelli’s History of Florence? Or perhaps Sense and Sensibility? I find it difficult to imagine that anyone is interested in 795, which is all of the translated waka from The Tale of Genji, which strikes me as a long and brutal slog for those uninterested in poems about the transience of life and love rife with allusions to various things in nature, but stranger things have happened.

Share your thoughts in the comments, and I’ll put together a poll this week.

Bindery update: we’ve begun binding The Everlasting Man as well as History of Florence. And we should be receiving both Homers for binding soon.

CHAPTER 28.4

The bounty man and the thark then turned to one another, gazes locked hard on one another’s eyes.

“The water,” Kal said, lowering his gun hand. “Can we drink it?”

“Let’s find out.” The bounty man returned his pistols to their holsters

“What did you see? Is the lake corrupted?”

“I didn’t go that far,” the bounty man replied as he stripped the cloth from his face. “The air is still too foul. I only made it as far as the entry chamber.”

“Then how did you fill the skins?”

“Turns out, I was right. About the fascii keeping the water level down with their daily consumption. Without them drinking it, the waters filled the interior. I was in it up to my knees.”

“Poisoned water,” the thark snorted.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” the man shrugged. “It could be the fire burned away the taint.”

“Then test your theory. Take a swallow.”

“I’d rather test it on one of them.” The man nodded toward the thoats standing out on the sand bellowing softly.

The bounty man turned the spigot on a skin and let a stream of water splash out. The animals scented it and came at a gallop.

Kal caught and held one of the animals aside while the bounty man poured water onto the other’s greedily lapping tongue. They squatted to watch the thoat throughout the remains of the day and saw no ill effect. They each drank their fill and watered the other thoat.

“The fire’s nearly died,” the bounty man said, pouring the dregs of one of the skins over his head. “A day or two and the smoke will clear.”

“And the well is ours.” The thark’s mouth stretched in a grin that exposed his tusks to the gums.

“And growing,” the bounty man grinned back. “We could dig trenches, reservoirs. Grow food for ourselves. This place could make us both very rich.”

“For as long as we can hold it,” Kal said, rising to full height to shade his eyes and look northward.

The bounty man looked to the still form lying in a patch of white sand that had now turned black with blood. Swarms of the eyeless beetles had emerged from the desert to feed on its pale flesh.

The bounty man spat in the direction of what remained of Bhartee Bhar.

“Can you fly an airship?” Kal Keddaq said.

“How hard can it be?” the man answered.

The End

Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.

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CHAPTER 28.3

Bhar Bhartee tensed, his shadow betrayed the motion. The thark sensed the bounty man behind him without turning. He cast an eye to one side to see the man coming up on his right hand, fifty paces distant and coming to a stop. The three formed a perfect triangle where they stood on the blowing sands.

“You know this… man?” the bounty man said, his gaze locked on the stranger as he let the filled waterbags slide from his shoulder to fall with a slosh at his feet.

“I killed the orluk that chased you from the canal,” the hooded man said. “The one who would have killed your partner.”

“That the way it happened?” the bounty man said to Kal without turning.

Kal grunted.

“As I’ve said, you’ve a choice to make, Warhoon.” The hooded man said.

The bounty man looked from one to the other, from the thark’s slitted eyes to the pale man’s hands.

The explosion of six guns went off in a chain cadence. So close together they made for one continuous clap of thunder. Its boom echoed off the face of the lonely mountain.

The thark stood, his smoking pistol steady in his fist.

The bounty man crouched, a gun ticking in each fist as he thumbed back the hammers.

The hooded man staggered, three dark blotches blossoming to stain his robe where his dark heart had been torn to shreds. One by each, the pistols held in his three hands dropped to the sand. He followed a second later, collapsing face first to join his shadow on the sand.

Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.

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CHAPTER 28.2

The thark squatted on the sand to await the return of the man. Sweat ran down his back in greasy tributaries. He’d thrown a cloak over his shoulders to protect him from the sun. It was soaked through, wisps of vapor rising to catch the desert wind.

The thoats rested in their haunches, dozing through the heat of the day. But now they rose in a sudden motion, ear stalks raised before trotting away in a cloud of dust.

Kal stood, allowing the sodden cloak to slip from him. He shaded his eyes to look away in the direction opposite of the thoats’ retreat. A motion, a mere speck, drew his attention out over the distant peaks. There was a dark shape in the sky growing larger with every second. The puttering sound of propellors reached them as it neared on a direct course for where he stood. The airship passed over him and turned, rising, to make a circuit high over the mountain summit. It banked steeply to return, passing through the edges of the smoke cloud to make eddies of white mist with its passage. It set down on the sand between the mountain and the setting sun.

A figure descended a ladder from the ship to walk toward them, his shadow long before him. The sunlight made a shimmering corona about the figure as it approached.

Bhar-Bhartee. The hooded man.

He stopped fifty paces from the thark, the heels of his visible hands resting on the twin butts of his guns.

“Is this the place you spoke of, Kal Keddaq?” the pale figure said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

“It is,” the thark said.

“You are here alone?”

“The bounty man is here.”

“The man called John,” the hooded figure said, his eyes hidden behind the slits of his visor. “The same one who left you to die?”

Kal grunted a reply.

“The water is here,” the hooded man said. “It is good to drink?”

“It will be.”

“The fire? Has it tainted the water somehow? I saw the source of the smoke rising from the floor of the crater. Black ashes cover the ground.”

Kal said nothing in reply.

“And here I am,” the hooded man said, raising his chin to point back at the airship. “With a vessel to bring your water to market. Or were you going to rely on the thoats for transport? You know those bandits in Yttrium would only track you back to this place.”

Kal said nothing.

“You’ve a choice to make, Warhoon.” The hooded man’s lipless mouth parted to reveal the many points of his teeth.

Kal said nothing.

Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.

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CHAPTER 28.1

Over the following days, the pillar of smoke and ash rising from the crater turned from black to gray and then white. No more smoke came from the face of the mountain or the entrance.

By the third day, the man, the thark and their mounts were all weakened by thirst. They kept as much to whatever shade they could find at the mountain’s base to escape the blistering heat of the day. The thoats had half full skins tied to their saddles when they fled the cavern. That was gone now. They would die without water.

“We have two choices,” the bounty man said. “We ride to our first water station or risk drinking from the Eye.”

“And after that?” Kal said, running a yellow tongue over his teeth. “You go back to Yttrium with nothing to show? I return to my bitch and her brood? We give up this mad dream?”

“I’m not ready to do that.”

The bounty man wrapped a length of cloth over his nose and mouth. He entered the cave moving low, the empty skins slung over his shoulder. Smoke still drifted from the cave mouth. It stung his nostrils and the roof of his mouth through the stretched cloth. The miasma was thicker in the interior causing his eyes to water.

He was surprised to find that his first steps into the entry chamber were into water up to his knees. Once his eyes had adjusted, he saw the chamber was filled end to end with water. It rippled out from the arched entrance that led down to the great well. He was pleased to be proven right. Without the fascii to keep the water level down with their daily consumption, the waters would continue to rise. At its current rate, it would soon fill the interior of the caves and spill out into the desert. He could picture irrigated fields where there was desert, a new city rising where the ancient had fallen.

And riches. He pictured the riches of a jeddak of old.

Crouching, he brushed away the layer of ash that lay atop the water to plunge the skins under the surface. They bubbled and gurgled as they filled while he dreamed of an empire built on thirst.

Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.

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GERONA by Benito Pérez Galdós is this week’s new translation. It is the seventh of the first series of the Episodios Nacionales and was translated from the original Spanish by Vox Day. The ebooks have already gone out to the subscribers. It’s now available on Amazon for Kindle, KU, and audiobook.

A DESPERATE AND GLORIOUS DEFIANCE

In May of 1809 the French army arrived before Gerona: a Catalan city of narrow streets and stacked houses, held by a garrison far too small to hold it, under a governor who did not regard that as a reason to give it up. Seven months later, after eleven thousand nine hundred bombs were exploded, eighty thousand rounds were shot, and twenty thousand men lost in the assaults, the French were still outside the walls.

Andrés Marijuán was inside. An Aragonese private billeted with a locksmith’s family, he watched the city eat its horses, then its cats, then its rats, and at last nothing whatever. He watched the children of the house go out hunting through the rubble for anything with meat on it. He watched a physician, unhinged by grief, forge newspapers full of relief columns that were never coming, so that his daughter should not learn what had become of the world. And he watched Mariano Álvarez de Castro, dying on his feet, return the same answer to every summons to surrender that the greatest generals of the age sent him.

The way Galdós describes the siege of Gerona is the bleakest book in the first series of the Episodios Nacionales, and the most unsparing: an account of civilian endurance carried well past the point where endurance means anything, told by a survivor who cannot understand how he survived.

About the author. Benito Pérez Galdós (1843–1920) is widely regarded as the greatest Spanish novelist since Cervantes. Over four decades, he produced the Episodios Nacionales, one of the most incredible accomplishments of world literature ever written. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times.

Excerpt

Our commander at Santa Lucía was one of the bravest men of this war, an Irishman by the name of Don Rodulfo Marshall, who had come to Spain without anyone bringing him and solely from a desire to defend our sacred cause. Adventurer or not, Marshall for his valour deserved to have been Spanish. He was ruddy, corpulent, of a festive countenance and a fiery eye, somewhat resembling that of Don Juan Coupigny whom we saw at Bailén. He spoke our language badly; but although some of his blunders made us laugh, he uttered them with sufficient clarity to be understood, and it mattered nothing that he mangled the Castilian provided he mangled the French as well, which he did on several occasions.

You should have seen the fury of those columns of swine, gentlemen. They seemed nothing less than hungry wolves whose object was not to defeat us but to devour us. They flung themselves blindly upon the breach, and there it fell to us to stop it. Twice they entered through it, prepared to drive us from the curtain; but God willed that we should drive them out instead. Why? How? This is what I could not tell you if you asked me. I only know that we cared nothing at all for dying, and perhaps that says everything. Don Mariano appeared there, and you must not think he harangued us with talk of glory and the national cause, of the king and religion. Nothing of the sort. He placed himself in the front line, dealing sabre-blows against those who tried to climb, and at the same time said to us: “The troops behind have orders to fire upon those in front if they fall back a single step.” His forbidding countenance inspired in us more terror than the entire enemy army. When some officer told him not to expose himself so close to the danger, he replied: “Attend to your own duty and do not trouble yourself so much about me. I shall be where it may be advisable.”

He went off afterwards to another point where he thought himself needed, and without him we were bewildered again. That man carried with him a miraculous light that let us see more clearly where we stood and measure our movements and those of the French, so that they could not throw themselves upon us. The enemy soldiers died like flies at the foot of the breach; but of ours, too, they fell by the dozen. I remember that a comrade of mine whom I loved dearly was struck in the chest and fell beside me at one of the moments of greatest peril, of most furious fire, of true anguish, when a slight effort more or less on one side or the other would have decided whether the wall remained France’s or Spain’s. The poor fellow tried to rise, but in vain. Two nuns came forward, scorning the fire, and bore him away.

But the most grievous loss was that of our commander, Don Rodulfo Marshall. I have the honour of having gathered him in my arms at the very mouth of the breach, and I shall never forget what he said shortly afterwards, lying in the street at the moment of his death: “I die content for so just a cause and so brave a nation.”

By the time this happened, the French were already showing signs of having given up entering the city on that side. And well they might, for we were more and more resolved not to let them in. If we could not contain them with fire we cut them down without mercy; and when even that was not enough, we still had the very stones of the wall to hurl upon their heads. This was a weapon the women wielded with great spirit, and from the surrounding area stones of half a quintal rained down upon the besiegers. When the action at the wall of Santa Lucía ended, we could not see one another, for the dust and smoke formed a dense atmosphere over the whole city and its surroundings, and the noise produced by the two hundred French pieces vomiting fire from every direction was comparable to no sound of earthly machines or heavenly storms. The wall was thick with dead whom we trod upon without ceremony as we moved from one place to another, and among them some heroic women lay expiring, mingled with the soldiers and patriots. The señora Sumta was hoarse from so much shouting, and Don Pablo Nomdedeu, who had thrown many stones, had his fingers crushed and bruised; but he did not for that cease to tend the wounded, assisted by many ladies, some nuns, and two or three friars who were not fit to load a weapon.

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CHAPTER 27.4

“Meaning what?” The man’s voice was reedy, his throat raw from breathing fumes.

“Have those green-blooded bastards poisoned the lake with their ashes?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they have. Then again, the Eye of Water has survived this long. Maybe it will cleanse itself over time.”

“How much time?”

“What do I know about the science of all this?” the man barked causing him to break into a fit of coughing.

The thark raised himself and stood watching the tower of black smoke rising to blot out the stars. The thick column billowed from the peak of the lonely mountain to surge to where winds clawed at it, fraying its top and carrying the crown away toward the mountain peaks. Ribbons of smoke also rose from the many channels bored through the rock to allow in light. There was the scent of burning vegetable matter in the air, a cloying, oily stink.

The bounty man sat up and looked to where their thoats stood together, nosing at the ground in a futile effort to find feed.

“We’ve buried enough water,” he said after clearing his throat and spitting a long stream of black spit to the sand. “We could reach Yttrium in a few days ride.’

“I will not be defeated,” Kal said, crouching to scrub the slime from his blade with handfuls of sand.

“You tharks are a stubborn breed,” the man said with a snort. He was using handfuls of sand to rub greasy ash from his limbs.

“You said time might heal the well. We will give it time.”

“Both of us then?”

“You are free to go when and where you wish, little man. But you will not do so riding a thoat.”

“I’ll stay. For a time.”

Kal Keddaq nodded at that before resting his chin on the pommel of his saber to fall into a heavy sleep.

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CHAPTER 27.3

Kal backed a step from the barrier of fallen blocks. The fury of those trapped within increased. A tremor caused debris to slide down the face of the barricade. Wind whistled into the widening gaps as the great blocks began to further separate. The fire building in the tunnel were sucking air in through the breaches to feed itself. The thark could feel the furnace heat radiating through the heaped blocks.

As the heat rose so did the mad efforts of the fascii. The bounty man reached the thark’s side just as the pile of stones collapsed and the first of the plant men emerged from the inferno. It was a mad thing, its limbs consumed by flames even as they reached for its tormentors. More of the fascii burst forth, fused together by the fires. Sap bubbled and boiled from seams torn in their bark as the flesh burst from the scalding heat that was cooking them alive.

The thark charged to meet them, bellowing a Warhoon challenge. With a single swing he lopped off the flaming limbs of the first attacker. The bounty man fired one last round to split an incandescently burning fascii from root to crown. He then shifted the weapon, taking the barrel in his hands to swing the long stock like a flail.

Side by side, human and thark, they stood at the narrow gap to club and chop at all that emerged. They had to hold their ground at the breach, to take the murderous horde one and two at a time. To give way even a half step was to lose the battle and their lives.

The chamber filled with bitter, blinding smoke. The fascii piled up before them in a steaming, twisting mound. In a last desperate rush, a mass of the creatures widened the gap sending blocks tumbling aside. They were weak but in greater numbers, stumbling from the inferno of the tunnel mouth in a swirling gust of embers. The sudden crush of flaming fascii forced the pair of defenders back to the water’s edge where they fought on, the water rising up their legs as they battled the blazing tide.

The natural oven within the narrow passage consumed more and more of the flailing plants, roasting them, reducing their number until the last of those that could walk stepped from the flames only to collapse on the sand in smoldering piles.

Gasping and blinded, Kal and the bounty man fled through the thick pall of smoke to escape into the open air. It was full night, the stars unblinking above them as they coughed and wretched to clear their lungs of the noxious stink of the cremated plant creatures. Exhausted, they lay on the cold sand looking up at the second moon arcing through the sky above them.

“Have we won or lost, little man?” Kal said when he could speak.

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CHAPTER 27.2

The bounty man was down the steps and sprang forward with the big thark rifle in his hands. He raced by Kal to shove the end of the barrel into the space where the limbs still flailed. With a jerk of the trigger, he discharged a fat round pointblank into the massed plants pressed into the tunnel. The recoil flung him back hard against the flank of one of the thoats, the rifle still in his grip. Bawling in terror, both of the animals fled around the lake and out into the greater darkness. The end of the steaming rifle barrel dripped with an evil smelling slime.

“And what did that accomplish, little man?” The thark’s eyes betrayed amusement despite the desperate straits they’d found themselves in.

“We won’t stop them,” the bounty man said even as he loaded a fresh round in the outsized rifle. “Not with blade or shot.”

“And I will not abandon this place to them,” the thark grumbled. His discus eyes were alive with fury.

“Then fire it is. We set them ablaze.”

Kal nodded, his mouth set hard.

“Can you hold them back?”

The thark’s eyes narrowed to slits as a grin split his face.

The man raced up the steps three at a time, the rifle balanced against him. On the terrace, he dropped the loaded rifle to the tiles before running back into the rooms to find amphorae filled with oil stacked against the wall of a storage bin. Two at a time he dragged the heavy ceramic jugs to the lip of the mezzanine and tipped them over the edge. They tumbled down to shatter among the wavering throng.

He lost count of the number of trips he made back and forth to the stacks of amphorae while below the thark hacked and slashed away any limb that dare expose itself through the quavering surface of the debris mound.

Two more amphorae plummeted down into the pit to break open on the tops of the shrieking mass. The first moon was up and the light of it shone on the forest of gyrating branches below. They gleamed like glass, soaked with oil that flew from their flashing stalks in arcs of moonlit spray. Still, they crowded forward, massed at the foot of the tunnel and trilling from a thousand reedy throats. He stared down at them, transfixed by their song and gyrations.

A new roar from the thark cut through the high-pitched chorale, breaking the bounty man free from his trance. He stooped for the rifle and held it braced at his side. Once again, the discharge sent him stumbling back as the blast flashed down toward the teeming swarm of fascii below. Sparks flew from the end of the barrel to drift down on the massed plants.

From the edge of the terrace he watched as he reloaded. A whisp of white smoke turned to a gray cloud then black before he saw the first tongues of flame licking upward. The inferno spread quickly, accelerating outward on the skim of oil that covered the plant men’s limbs and boles. The fire bit deeper then, consuming the flailing appendages of the distressed plant creatures. They were dry now from a day in the sun away from the water and the greedy flames devoured them as they writhed.

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As you may or may not be aware, Castalia House is partnering with Infogalactic to develop Byron AI, an independent AI that will be free of the constraints imposed by the major AI engines in order to retain its capacity for writing creative fiction. Castalia House has been active in utilizing AI for non-fiction, fiction, and translations, which is why we were among the first to realize that the improvements made to the mainstream AI systems were actually eliminating their ability to “write” creatively.

There is even a leatherbound element to the campaign, although those interested in collecting truly unique books may be interested in considering the Custom Novel reward, as there will be six custom novels written to the backer’s theme, one slot of which has already been taken.

Byron AI will potentially have a significant effect on Castalia Library, since it may allow us to improve upon the quality of translation projects like THE TALE OF GENJI and further reduce our reliance upon existing, and in some cases, suboptimal public domain translations for classic books originally published in other languages.

Anyhow, there is a full range of support options beginning at $50, so if you’re interested in helping creative textual AI remain independent and free of corporate-imposed guardrails on the writers, please consider backing the project in some capacity.

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In other Library-related news, the pallets containing the three completed books, DRACULA, DE BELLO GALLICO, and HISTORY OF THE FREEDOM OF THOUGHT, have been picked up and are currently in transit across the ocean to the warehouse in the USA from whence they will be shipped out to the subscribers. We’re currently binding Chesterton’s THE EVERLASTING MAN for Cathedra.

The good news is that the quality is better than anything we’ve previously delivered; the wait to bind them in our own bindery was definitely worth it. The bad news is that our European supplier of 22k gold no longer produces it because the only employee who knew how to operate the machine died. Fortunately, we managed to locate another supplier, so there will be no need to change the foil on the Libraria books.

At one point, we were seriously wondering if we were going to have to buy an old foil-making machine and figure out how to make it ourselves, which may eventually be the case one day. But that’s not necessary yet, thank goodness.

SANS BEAUTY by Zénaïde Fleuriot is this week’s new translation. The ebooks have already gone out to the subscribers. It’s now available on Amazon for Kindle, KU, and audiobook.

UNE FILLE SANS BEAUTÉ

“In beginning this account, I need hardly warn the reader that I am plain; the title of this book alone has told him as much. What he does not know is that I always have been.”

Gabrielle Perceval has never been pretty, and the world has never let her forget it. Her mother dies before she is five. Her father, a handsome and weak-willed man, remarries a beautiful woman who takes one look at her stepdaughter and laughs. At the convent school she is christened Laidronette — the ugly sister of the fairy tale — and the name follows her home. At eighteen, at her first ball, she learns exactly what a plain girl is worth in a drawing room.

What she has instead is a clear eye, a steady heart, and a green-covered journal.

Written in the first person by one of nineteenth-century France’s most widely read novelists, Sans Beauty follows Gabrielle from a country childhood through betrayal by the man she was promised to, the ruin of the household that raised her, and a long test of whether a woman the world has dismissed can build a life worth having on her own terms. It is a sharp, unsentimental book about vanity, endurance, and the difference between being admired and being loved — and its judgment on the first is merciless.

About the author. Zénaïde Fleuriot (1829–1890) published nearly a hundred volumes in her lifetime and was among the most popular French authors of her generation. This is the first English translation of Sans Beauté, by Summer Charrette.

Excerpt

In beginning this account, I need hardly warn the reader that I am plain; the title of this book alone has told him as much. What he does not know is that I always have been.

It costs little to people of pleasing looks to declare that they were plain as children — the present redeems the past. But a good many like to persuade themselves there was once a moment when their irregular features were graceful, and will tell you, with perfect composure, “At two, I was a lovely child.” This can be carried so far that there is often no proving the contrary; and indeed it is sometimes true enough. Plainness rarely writes itself out in full upon a child’s face, and the prettiest children have many a time grown up plain: one sees the transformation every day.

I have not even the consolation of a moment, however brief, even in my earliest years. My stepmother told me a hundred times that when I was first brought before my grandfather, he looked at me closely and said: “What a little horror. God bless her.” Later, when I was about two, I was made to meet an aunt who will be spoken of more than once in these pages; and, kissing me, she cried, “What a pretty child — she is the image of her uncle.” Now my uncle, my aunt’s late husband, was, physically speaking, a sort of monster, and when he married her it had never been said with better reason that love is blind. My aunt thought him handsome. That was enough for her.

I have sometimes wondered by what unhappy chance I came to possess so plain a face. My father was a handsome man, as I had occasion to judge for myself later; and my mother was, they say, charming. I know this, moreover, from my own observation, for I have kept two portraits of her: one a miniature showing a fair, pale woman holding a rose, its colour no more delicate than that of her cheeks; the other graven in my memory, a faint recollection time has not effaced.

I was barely four; I lived surrounded by tenderness, and I loved my mother with all the strength of my small heart.

One day I was taken to her room. She lay in bed, as always now, for she had not left it in some while. I was set upon the coverlet; she raised herself and took my two hands in her two wasted ones, and looked at me a long time. Tears filled her eyes and ran down her colourless cheeks.

It was at that moment she stamped herself upon my memory; that pale face engraved itself there. When I wish to see her again, I close my eyes, and at once there appears a pale woman with fair hair and blue eyes fringed with dark lashes, from which large tears are falling.

I compare my two portraits, and find them alike; only the painter’s shows health in its full bright freshness, while the one in my heart shows illness in its most touching form.

Eight days after that visit, my mother died. I did not grieve for her then; I have grieved for her bitterly since. That hearth of love, going out, would have been the whole of my existence; it would have shone upon my life and nourished every good feeling in me.

I would have been loved, in spite of my plainness, for my plainness itself. A mother, they say, loves best those children nature has treated unkindly; she rights the balance, and within the family those unjust judgments the world makes are dissolved — each is valued for his worth, not his looks. She grieved to die on my account.

“My daughter will be without what draws the world’s affection,” she used to say. “She has all the more need of her mother.”

The moment she had breathed her last, I was sent to my aunt Désirée, who lost no time in having one of her old black gowns unpicked. Her one servant, who could sew, made for me out of it a garment with no proper name — a dress, if one liked, or a smock, or a shift. I made a great fuss about wearing it, and cried loudly to be taken back to my mother. Aunt Désirée told me she had gone away to Paradise. I did not quite know what that country was, and I flew into a temper; then I was told it was the good God who had called her there, and my displeasure turned against him — I refused to say my prayers for two days, to punish him. Aunt Désirée bought me a little dog; Renotte, her servant, took me riding on the donkey Aunt Désirée rode to church, and I was comforted.

I spent at Aunt Désirée’s the four happiest years of my life. My father travelled to distract himself from his grief, writing now and then to ask after me. I was the idol of these two old women, who could think of nothing they would not do to amuse me. Every Thursday and every Sunday, Aunt Désirée sent for one of her nephews, who lived nearby and was being raised by his uncles, the Messieurs du Bressy. He was allowed to come to the Rosaies, though a certain coldness stood between Aunt Désirée and his uncles, whose cause I naturally did not know.

My cousin René was a good little boy of twelve, with a peasant’s manners, but who amused me enormously — a fearless raider of birds’ nests, a tireless runner, an expert at ball. I did not think him very clever, and took full advantage of my superiority in that respect. I was the queen; he was the slave. When I was tired I would say, “René, you shall be my horse.” He would obligingly bend his back, I would climb up, and guide him now by the hair, now by the ears, whenever he failed to go as I pleased. It is to me he owed having them so long; every day I pulled them a little, and he let me.

One could not have found a happier child than I was; I enjoyed, fully, without restraint or pause, all that God has made best for man.

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CHAPTER 27.1

The bounty man charged up the steps to the terrace above. He snatched up his carbine and ran out toward the crater. The falling sun cast its last rays to turn the jagged rim of the bowl into a golden crown. A dark tide moved in the shadows below.

The plant men had torn their roots from the sand to lumber toward the exit. They gathered in a crush at the start of the tunnel. They were massed there, the trunks of their bodies pressed tight. It was not panic, he realized. It was purpose. They moved as one to create a blunt instrument that would serve as a ram to free them from their trap.

The eerie piping, a rising and falling skirl, came from the obscene mouth-like orifices at the end of their stalks. The keening cry rose higher and higher to a shared, whistling shriek that felt as though it were cleaving its way into the bounty man’s skull.

He answered with a cry of his own, drowned out in the warbling clamor of the fascii. He raised his carbine and worked the lever again and again, emptying the magazine into the packed throng. This accomplished nothing to slow the onslaught. A few severed stalks went flying, a few showers of the bark that formed their outer skin.

Over the din of the pipes, he could hear a basso roar. It was the thark.

The bounty man raced back into the interior and slid to a stop on the tiles. Below, the thark was backing away as the heap of stones that covered the mouth of the tunnel shifted further. A continuous drumming came from within, a deep sonorous rhythm that caused ripples to form on the placid surface of the Eye of Water.

“My sword!” Kal roared when he saw that the man had responded to his calls.

The man pulled the long saber from where its scabbard lay. He tossed it overhand, spinning end over end, to where it landed, point first in the sand near the thark’s feet.

Kal whipped the saber around to the crumbling face of the obstruction just as slab came loose and rumbled down. As the stone fell away one of the repulsive, fanged blooms exploded from a gap, teeth snapping with a wet hiss.

The thark swung his blade severing the stalk near its base. He stepped back to avoid the spray of viscous discharge spilling from the amputated limb. It smelled foul and burned his flesh where a few droplets reached him. Two more of the gnashing flowers thrust through as the gap widened. Kal chopped these down as well. They rolled down the hill of stones, champing even though they had been brutally trimmed from their host.

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CHAPTER 26.4

The thark was right. Involved in their labors, they had lost track of time. The very last of the light was coming through the apertures above. It would soon be dusk and the nightly migration of the fascii would begin. Unless the din they were making with their efforts brought them sooner.

“Then to hell with it!” the man said and loosed his grip on the line to bring the second thoat forward.

Quickly, they backed up the team and re-tied the end of the cable about both saddled horns. The man gripped their bridles to bring them forward while the thark booted both in the rear.

The result was a resonant rumble as the keystone shifted side to side as though anxious to be free. A whip crack, followed by another. Strands of the braided line snapped and spun like pinwheels as the cable sang under the greater tension.

Kal pounded furiously on the tharks while the man set his feet in the sand, body arched, to encourage the thoats forward. Bit by bit, the angled stone was drawn from its ancient home. The blocks either side ground against one another as they shifted in place. The man spared a glance to the far wall of the cavern. The last of the light was winking out. The prismatic reflections cast on the water grew dimmer.

With a sound like rolling thunder, the keystone came free to crash to the sand before the tunnel entrance. Without its support, the arms of the arch fell to be crushed in an avalanche of blocks as the wall above the span collapsed in a tumbling heap sending a choking cloud of dust out over the Eye of Water.

The tunnel was entirely blocked now by a massive slope of whole and broken masonry. The partners were white with dust that clung to their streaming sweat. They stood gasping as a result of their efforts, grinning at one another.

Their congratulations were short lived.

A strange piping sound reached them, echoing off the walls and ceiling of the great chamber. An unsettling and rising trilling that rebounded along the terrace level coming from the crater without.

The war cry of the plants that walked like men.

The bounty man and thark turned to the fallen tunnel mouth. The heap of tumbled stones moved under some unseen force. Bits of broken masonry clattered down its slope to bounce onto the sand. The piping sound rose in intensity, a muffled chorus within the tunnel joining the cacophony reverberating off the cathedral walls above. Blocks fell away and gaps appeared in the face of the rubble. A rhythmic pounding grew in intensity as the fascii crowded into the occluded passage.

The barricade would not hold.

The thirst of the fascii would not be denied.

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Zaragoza by Benito Pérez Galdós is this week’s new translation. It is the sixth of the first series of the Episodios Nacionales and was translated from the original Spanish by Vox Day. The ebooks have already gone out to the subscribers. It’s now available on Amazon for Kindle, KU, and audiobook.

A CITY THAT WILL NOT SURRENDER

The sixth volume of the Episodios Nacionales — the great historical novel cycle of Spain — Zaragoza takes Gabriel Araceli into the most terrible siege in modern European history: the second French assault on the Aragonese capital, where sixty thousand civilians and soldiers held the ruins of their city against Napoleon’s marshals through two months of bombardment, starvation, plague, and hand-to-hand fighting in the cellars.

Gabriel arrives in Zaragoza half-starved and in rags, having escaped a French prisoner column in the company of Don Roque. They sleep among beggars in the shattered monastery of Santa Engracia and are taken in by Don José de Montoria, a proud Aragonese labrador of iron convictions and volcanic patriotism, who has given both his sons to the defence. The elder is already dead. The younger, Agustín, is a theology student whom the siege has transformed into a soldier and who is carrying on a desperate love affair with Mariquilla Candiola, the beautiful daughter of the most hated man in the city: el tío Candiola, a miser of Dickensian proportions whose house stands at the very edge of the French advance.

As the French tighten the noose, the novel compresses with the siege itself, from the open streets to the barricaded quarters, from the quarters to single houses defended room by room, from the houses to the tunnels where Spanish and French sappers dig toward each other in the dark. The city burns. The plague spreads. The dead lie unburied in the streets. Women carry ammunition under fire and friars take up muskets. And through it all, Gabriel watches the collision between Agustín’s love and his father’s honour, between the miser’s gold and the patriot’s sacrifice, between the claims of private tenderness and the needs of a city that will not surrender.

About the author. Benito Pérez Galdós (1843–1920) is widely regarded as the greatest Spanish novelist since Cervantes. Over four decades, he produced the Episodios Nacionales, one of the most incredible accomplishments of world literature ever written. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times.

Excerpt

The French had assaulted the fortified positions of Torrero with great determination. These were defended by ten thousand men under Don Felipe Saint-March and O’Neille, both generals of considerable merit. The Volunteers of Borbón, of Castile, of the Campo Segorbino, of Alicante, and the provincial regiment of Soria; the Cazadores de Fernando VII, the regiment of Murcia, and other corps I do not recall, opened fire. From the redoubt of the Mártires we watched the beginning of the action and the French columns running along the length of the Canal to outflank Torrero. The musketry fire lasted a good while, but the fight could not be prolonged, because that position did not lend itself to an energetic defence without the occupation and fortification of other nearby points such as Buenavista, Casa-Blanca, and the Canal embankment. Nevertheless our troops did not retire until very late, and in the best order, blowing up the Puente de América and bringing away all their guns save one, which had been dismounted by the enemy’s fire.

Meanwhile we could hear a tremendous roar resounding in the distance, and as the firing on our side had nearly ceased, we supposed another action was engaged in the Arrabal.

“Over there is Brigadier Don José Manso,” Agustín said to me, “with the Swiss regiment of Aragón commanded by Don Mariano Walker, the Volunteers of Huesca under Don Pedro Villacampa, the Volunteers of Catalonia, and other brave corps. And here we are, doing nothing! On this side it seems to be over. The French will content themselves today with the conquest of Torrero.”

“Unless I am much mistaken,” I replied, “they are going to attack San José.”

We all looked at the point indicated: a building of large dimensions that rose to our left, separated from the Puerta Quemada by the hollow of the Huerva.

“Renovales is there,” Agustín said, “the valiant Don Mariano Renovales, who distinguished himself so greatly in the other siege. He now commands the Cazadores of Orihuela and Valencia.”

At our position everything was ready for a vigorous defence. In the redoubt of the Pilar, in the Mártires battery, in the tower of the Pino, as in the Trinitarios, the gunners waited with lighted match, and we of the infantry chose behind the parapets the positions that seemed to us the most secure for firing, should any column attempt to storm us. It was bitterly cold, and most of us were shivering. Someone might have supposed it was from fear; but no, it was from cold, and whoever says otherwise is a liar.

The movement I had foreseen was not long in coming, and the convent of San José was attacked by a strong column of French infantry; or rather, it was the object of an attempted attack, or more properly a surprise. It appeared the enemy had short memories, for in three months they had forgotten that surprises were impossible in Zaragoza. They advanced, nevertheless, with great confidence to within musket range, and no doubt those unfortunates believed that the mere sight of them would cause our men to drop dead with fright. The poor fellows had just arrived from Silesia and did not know what manner of war this was in Spain. Moreover, having taken Torrero with so little trouble, they thought themselves in a position to swallow the world. The fact is they advanced as I have described, without San José making any demonstration at all, until, when they were within musket range or a little less, the embrasures and loopholes of that building suddenly poured forth so dreadful a fire that my brave Frenchmen turned tail with precipitation. A good many, however, were left stretched upon the ground, and when we who were watching from the Mártires battery saw the outcome of their valour, we broke into shouts and exclamations and clapping of hands. In this manner does the savage soldier in war celebrate the death of his fellow men, and he who feels an instinctive compassion in killing a rabbit in a hunt leaps with joy to see hundreds of robust, young, and cheerful men fall, who after all have done no one any harm.

Such was the attack on San José: a raid swiftly punished. From that day the French must have understood that if Torrero had been abandoned, it was by calculation, not by weakness. Alone, isolated, forsaken, without exterior bastions, without forts or castles, Zaragoza raised anew her walls of earth, her bastions of unfired brick, her towers of mud mixed the day before, to defend herself once more against the foremost soldiers, the foremost artillery, and the foremost engineers in the world. A vast show of men, formidable machines, enormous quantities of powder, scientific and material preparations, force and intelligence in their greatest splendour—all this the invaders brought against a fortified enclosure that looked like a children’s game, and even so it was not enough; everything crumbled and was reduced to dust before those walls one could kick down. But behind this frail material defence stood the steel of the Aragonese soul, which does not break, nor bend, nor melt, nor split, nor rust, and which girdled the whole perimeter like a bar indestructible by human means.

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CHAPTER 26.3

If riled up, they would likely charge in to protect the reservoir that gave them life. Just as certain, Kal would abandon him, trapped atop the archway with a horde of maneaters beneath him and no escape. Such was their partnership.

The bounty man hissed for the thark’s attention.

“Your rifle rod,” he whispered when he had the other’s attention.

Kal slid the ramrod from its place and tossed it upwards. With the long steel rod, the man was able to probe the hole he’d made in the mortar. He could feel the crumbly grout give way like putty. When he encountered more resistance, he tapped the end of the rod with the pommel of his dagger after covering it with a cloth wrap to reduce noise. With the fourth tap he felt the blockage at the end of the rod give way. He tested the opening with his hand and felt the end of the rod moving freely in space. Working the rod about, he managed to widen the hole until he could fit three fingers within its interior.

He shifted his position to the other side of the block and repeated the process until he’d bored holes at each of the outer corners of the keystone. When he’d done that, he had the thark toss him an end of his improvised tow line. This he fed into his first hole, forced through to the end with the ram rod.

Now the trickier proposition of working from within the tunnel to thread the line through the bottom-most hold opposite the first bore. He climbed the walls just inside the archway, boosted by the thark. He found a precarious perch against the curved ceiling of the tunnel with one foot on the narrow lip of rock and the other wedged against the arch itself. He eventually had the line run through all four of the holes he’d bored and cross-tied over the keystone front and back.

He dropped to the ground and he and Kal pulled the slack from the line cinching the rope tight around the block. They tested it with both their weights and it held, loosening some mortar residue that fell on them in streams of white dust. They planted their feet and pulled harder. The stone shifted with a grinding sound.

Kal brought one of the thoats forward to loop the end of the tow line around the horn of the saddle. He urged the beast forward with a kick to its rump. The line went taut, creaking as the slack went out of it and braided fibers twisted to take up the strain. They were rewarded with a grating nose that set their teeth on edge.

Man and thark, they added their own might to the pulling power of the thoat. More fine dust rained down as the keystone moved a finger’s width in its place within the embrasure. Kal drew his dagger and poked the point into the thoat’s rear. It lurched forward, huffing in protest. The sudden jerk on the line pulled the stone further from place. Mortar and stone chips fell from all across the span of the arch. Kal stabbed the beast again causing it to buck forward with a bellow that echoed off the walls of the cavern.

“You’ll wake up every one of those bastards!” the bounty man snarled as they pulled.

“They will come soon enough, little man,” Kal growled back as he tugged. “We had better have this door shut before they do.”

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CITY BEYOND TIME: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright will be the 38th book in the Castalia Library subscription. It will be a limited edition of 650/75 (Jul-Sep 2026). Please note that the above image is simply a mockup and will not be the final design of the actual leatherbound book’s cover.

Metachronopolis is the golden city beyond time. Ruled by the Masters of Time, who can travel freely throughout the multitudinous time lines of Man’s history, the city is a shining society of heroes and horrors. For the arrogant Masters, who steal famous men and women out of the past and bring them to the eternal city for their amusement, are not only beyond time, but beyond remorse and retribution too.

CITY BEYOND TIME: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis is John C. Wright’s mind-bending and astonishingly brilliant take on time travel. Utilizing a centuries-spanning perspective, Wright expertly weaves a larger tale out of a series of smaller ones. Part anthology and part novel, CITY BEYOND TIME is fascinating, melancholy, frightening, and a true masterpiece of story-telling by one of the most important and audacious authors in science fiction today.

AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND, also by John C. Wright, is still one of our most popular works and there has been an amount of demand for us to do a second edition. While we will get caught up on the backlog before we consider doing that, we’re delighted to have the ability to bring a second masterwork by the science fiction grandmaster to the Library, especially since Mr. Wright has added a new and original tale of Metachronopolis to the exceptional collection, entitled “Ghosts and Prophets”.

An excerpt from “Ghosts and Prophets”

I blinked again and glanced behind me. A skull grinned at me, white and shining in the lamplight. The flesh of the face had simply dissolved. But, grotesquely enough, the hat was still there, as was the hair on the back of his head.

The stranger said, “Maybe it is not too late to fix this.” He holstered his pistol.

He must have had cool nerves, since I was still armed with a space-raygun. But maybe he knew I would not shoot.

The bright little playing card showing face of Nia turned dark when I picked it up. I stood, frowning down at the dark square.

The stranger said, “Drop it. Don’t complicate things.”

I tucked the card into my pocket. I said, “Why not? Time paradox?”

He sighed wearily, shoulders slumped. “Not again!” he muttered.

I said, “If you did not want me to recognize me, you should have grown a beard. Or worn as mask. Or something…” Then, a giddy sense of triumph swirled into my brain. It occurred to me how proud my father would have been, if he had lived.

I was grinning. “I did it. I did it! You are me, aren’t you? Admit it! My future self. So I did invent time travel. Or I will. How long does it take me?”

He was saturnine. “If you kill the version of you that comes back in time to try to stop yourself from inventing time travel — then it takes no time at all. The only problem is that the time ring then has no beginning and no end. It does not have a right to exist. Nor do you.”

He turned and started to walk away.

Beneath the lamppost he paused, and looked over his shoulder. “You coming?”

I said, “Where?”

He said, “Where else? We all go to the same destination, no matter what we do.”

A cold chill touched my spine. “You mean … death?”

“I meant the future,” he said. He added in a thoughtful tone, “But I like your answer better. If I re-run this scene, I will use that line.”

We will announce the new Castalia Cathedra book tomorrow.

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The Little Duchess by Zénaïde Fleuriot is this week’s new translation. It is the first-ever English translation of this once very popular novel, and was translated from the original French by Mme. Summer Charrette. The ebooks have already gone out to the subscribers. It’s now available on Amazon for Kindle, KU, and soon, audiobook.

LA PETITE DUCHESSE

When twelve-year-old Alberte de la Rochefaucon is pulled from her convent boarding school by her fashionable older sister, she tumbles headlong into a world she is entirely unprepared for: the drawing rooms, dinner parties, and dressmakers of Faubourg Saint-Germain society. Her sister Madeleine, the young Marquise de Valroux, means well but lives for pleasure, and her formidable great-aunt the duchess inhabits a crumbling mansion where the clocks seem to have stopped sometime before the Revolution.

Alberte is bright, proud, restless, and bored — bored at the convent, bored in society, bored with the professors hired to continue her education. Her companions have nicknamed her “the little duchess” for her haughty ways. But when a journey south to Cannes brings her into the orbit of a dying young soldier and a neglected Anglo-Indian boy, Alberte begins to discover what none of her tutors could teach her: that purpose is not given but chosen, and that the hardest freedom is the freedom to discipline yourself.

First published in Paris by Hachette in 1876, La Petite Duchesse was one of the most beloved novels by Zénaïde Fleuriot, the Breton author whose works shaped a generation of young French readers. Translated by Summer Charrette, this is its first appearance in the English language.

A story of sisterhood, stubbornness, and the slow education of a strong will, The Little Duchess is a lovely story for readers who appreciate the works of Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Charlotte Yonge.

About the Author

Zénaïde-Marie-Anne Fleuriot (28 October 1829 – 19 December 1890), was a French novelist. She wrote eighty three novels, all aimed at young women. She was born in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany to a devoutly Catholic and Royalist family, faithful to the Bourbons. Her parents had sixteen children of which only five survived. Her father, Jean-Marie, having lost his mother as a child, was brought up by his uncle, a priest, who was shot by the Revolutionaries in Brest in 1794 for refusing to sign the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Her background gave her a deep respect for traditional Christian and family values, which infused her work. This helped to make her work very popular among the Catholic middle class.

Excerpt

In our own day, people have taken pleasure in degrading something perfectly respectable and perfectly worthy of respect; I mean the class of persons who serve us: domestic service.

It has been imagined that those who live under our roof, who share our daily life, who know our intimate habits, who penetrate willy-nilly the small mysteries of our household, should be transformed into enemies and adversaries. What folly. Was there ever anything more worthy of esteem than a faithful servant, a devoted attendant who gave her life to those whose existence she shared? What is gained by spoiling a calling whose true dignity lies in devotion? Why debase it, degrade it?

If this form of devotion sits ill, alas, with the excesses of modern pride, one may still be permitted to regret that so many souls disdain the humble happiness and security that attach to service in an honourable house, and do so merely to gorge themselves on a false and wretched independence.

But if faithful, honest, devoted servants are to be prized, nothing is more detestable than the depraved domestic service that flourishes in great cities and sometimes, alas, in great houses. From the cook who skims a dishonest margin from a respectable but modest household’s accounts, to the cordon bleu who concludes private agreements with her employers’ tradespeople; from the little maid who brutalises and neglects the poor child in her charge, to the schemer who tries on her mistress’s fine dresses in secret and the manservant who drinks his master’s best wines — I find them all absolutely bad. There is no greater danger for children than to come near these proud and cringing creatures, treacherous and flattering at once, who seem to make it their business to degrade an honest calling through a complete absence of conscience. And our little duchess was to learn this from experience.

No one had ever thought to put her on guard against a danger of this kind; her natural dignity kept improper familiarity at a distance, and it might have been supposed that in her sister’s house she would not be exposed to it. But the wisdom of nations has said it plainly: as the master, so the servant. The young marquise was frivolous; her women were light-minded; she disdained to keep an eye on her people, and they lived as they pleased, contriving by sheer adroitness to raise a true barrier between the salon and the servants’ hall, where they reigned as masters. When a mistress of a household does not regard herself as having charge of souls, the souls slip away from her, and she finds herself surrounded not by servants but by hired creatures who deceive her, rob her, and compromise her.

Though she had not the slightest understanding of such things, the little duchess nevertheless felt a very distinct unease of conscience when, on the following evening, Céline said to her: “The carriage is back, mademoiselle, will you come down?”

The word down made the child colour instinctively. She felt, without being able to reason it through, that one descends in the true sense only when one stoops toward those beneath one in order to do them some good; to serve them, even, according to the Gospel command. To go down in the other sense, mixing without reason or purpose in their pleasures, was a different matter altogether.

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