Book Excerpt: ychical experiences which had befallen him. I at least was sound in nerve and brain, and it was with something of the pleasurable thrill of anticipation with which the sportsman takes his position beside the haunt of his game that I shut the laboratory door behind me, and partially undressing, lay down upon the rug-covered settee. It was not an ideal atmosphere for a bedroom. The air was heavy with many chemical odours, that of methylated spirit predominating. Nor were the decorations of my chamber very sedative. The odious line of glass jars with their relics of disease and suffering stretched in front of my very eyes. There was no blind to the window, and a three-quarter moon streamed its white light into the room, tracing a silver square with filigree lattices upon the opposite wall. When I had extinguished my candle this one bright patch in the midst of the general gloom had certainly an eerie and discomposing aspect. A rigid and absolute silence reigned throughout the old house, so that the low sw Read More
Figures of Earth is the second installment in James Branch Cabell’s Biography of the Life of Manuel, set in the imaginary province of Poictesme. Young Manuel is a simple, well-liked swineherd who is often seen continually reshaping a small figure he made from the marsh clay from the pool of Haranton. One day, a stranger appears and tells Manuel of an adventure to save the Count of Arnaye’s daughter from a wizard who carried her off to the gray mountain called Vraidex. Manuel accepts this adventure (and many more that follow)—and his life will never be the same. The book was originally published in 1921 and was dedicated to “six most gallant champions,” each of whom were real persons who came to Cabell’s defense during the legal battle over alleged obscenity in his previous novel, Jurgen. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
Political turmoil convulses 19th-century Russia, as Razumov, a young student preparing for a career in the czarist bureaucracy, unwittingly becomes embroiled in the assassination of a public official. Asked to spy on the family of the assassin -- his close friend -- he must come to terms with timeless questions of accountability and human integrity.