Mendicant Melody part 4
The exhausted and famished tenor sings to the capon hanging outside an upper window, as he inhales the appetizing aroma of the roast cooking...
Mendicant Melody part 3
What strange subterranean passages of sentiment and tone, from the lively airs of the opera-bouffe to the plaintive entreaties directed toward deserted windows!
“Signori, something...
Mendicant Melody part 2
Evidences of poverty and misery and signs, of a life of hardship were manifested by the instruments themselves; the voice of weariness and anguish...
Mendicant Melody part 1
Edmondo De Amicis (1846— 1908)
De Amicis is best known to the world as the author of the children`s classic, Cuore. De Amicis was a...
The Four Friends
Jean De La Fontaine (1621-1695)
One of the great figures of the age of Louis XIV, Jean de La Fontaine was born at Chateau-Thierry in...
The Priest and the Mulberries part 2
“God!” said he, “if any one now should cry `Gee up!` ” He thought and spoke the words at the same moment, whereat the...
The Priest and the Mulberries part 1
The Priest and the Mulberries
Anonymous: 12th or 13th Century
Practically nothing is known of the author of this pleasant little Fabliau. Compared with the great...
The Matron of Ephesus
Petronius (Died 66 A.D.)
Gaius Petronius Arbiter was born some time early in the First Century of the Christian era, and committed suicide in the...
The Jackal
The Jackal (Anonymous: 14th Century A.D., or earlier)
Nothing is known of the author of the Hitopadesa, a manual of didac-tic fables composed—on the basis...
Horatius at the Bridge
Ancient Rome
It is a commonplace of literary history that Roman art was largely imitated or derived from the Greek, and in particular that Roman...
