Front matter
Reading edition
This file was produced by Carlo Traverso, Relka Bihari, Andrea Ball, and
THE GRIP OF DESIRE
THE STORY OF A PARISH-PRIEST
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF HECTOR FRANCE
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Love is a familiar; love is a devil; there is no evil angel but love. Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an excellent strength; yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit.
Love's Labour Lost.
With an engraved portrait of the Author
Other Works in English
By HECTOR FRANCE
Mansour's Chastisement, the Loves and Intrigues of an Arab Don Juan, done into English by ALFRED ALLINSON, and embellished with Seven fine Engravings by THEVENIN, after Drawings by BAZEILHAC.
Musk, Hashish and Blood, with Twenty-One Engravings by PAUL AVRIL. (In the Press.)
The Attack on the Brothels, A Realistic Account of the Civilizing of "Barbarians". With Illustrations. (In Hand.)
The Daughter of the Christ; The most original and philosophic work of the last twenty years. This work will be sumptuously illustrated by leading French Artists. (In Preparation.)
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[Illustration: the author.]
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TO THE READER
The truth, the bitter truth.
DANTON.
Oh, sons and brothers, oh, poets When the thing exists, speak the word.
V. HUGO.
I do not assert that all the personages in this story are models of virtue. To some of them has been given a part which severe morality reproves. But I am a realist and not an idealist, and for that I beg the reader a thousand pardons. I have tried to paint what I saw and not that of which I dreamed. If my figures are not chaste, the fault is not mine, but of those who passed before me and whose features I sketched as my pen ran on.
You are warned therefore, Madam, that when you open this book, you will not find a "Treatise on Morality". Here are only the simple and pastoral loves of a poor and obscure village priest. An idyll in the shade of the parsonage limes and under the motionless eye of the weather-cock on the belfry.
If then you come across any word which offends your chaste ears, any picture which distresses your modest eye, blame only your own curiosity.