Résultats lu par "Sam" dans Toutes les catégories

"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" is a short story by the American author Edgar Allan Poe about a mesmerist who puts a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death. An example of a tale of suspense and horror, it is also to a certain degree a hoax, as it was published without claiming to be fictional, and many at the time of publication (1845) took it to be a factual account.

A stormy evening of olive and silver was closing in, as Father Brown, wrapped in a grey Scotch plaid, came to the end of a grey Scotch valley and beheld the strange castle of Glengyle. It stopped one end of the glen or hollow like a blind alley; and it looked like the end of the world. Rising in steep roofs and spires of sea-green slate in the manner of the old French-Scotch chateaux, it reminded an Englishman of the sinister steeple-hats of witches in fairy tales; and the pine woods that rocked round the green turrets looked, by comparison, as black as numberless flocks of ravens.

The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a dangerous plague, known as the Red Death, by hiding in his abbey. He, along with many other wealthy nobles, hosts a masquerade ball in seven rooms of the abbey, each decorated with a different color. In the midst of their revelry, a mysterious figure disguised as a Red Death victim enters and makes his way through each of the rooms. Prospero dies after confronting this stranger, whose "costume" proves to contain nothing tangible inside it.

The Paradise of Thieves was published in The Wisdom of Father Brown. This mystery is a real cliff-hanger. The great Muscari, most original of the young Tuscan poets, walked swiftly into his favourite restaurant, which overlooked the Mediterranean, was covered by an awning and fenced by little lemon and orange trees. Waiters in white aprons were already laying out on white tables the insignia of an early and elegant lunch; and this seemed to increase a satisfaction that already touched the top of swagger.

"William Wilson" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in The Gift, with a setting inspired by Poe's formative years on the outskirts of London. The tale features a doppelgänger. The story follows a man of "a noble descent" named William Wilson. Although denouncing his profligate past, he does not accept full blame for his actions and says that "man was never thus ... tempted before".

"The Hammer of God," readers are surprised to learn from Father Brown that the murderer is not a violent madman but rather a very respected member of the community. The Reverend Wilfred Bohun could no longer stand the scandalous behavior of his alcoholic brother Norman, who blasphemed God and humiliated the Reverend Bohun in the eyes of his parishioners. Chesterton states that Wilfred and Norman Bohun belong to an old noble family whose descendants are now mostly "drunkards and dandy degenerates." Rumor has it that there has been "a whisper of insanity" in the Bohun family.

The ancient fable of two antagonistic spirits imprisoned in one body, equally powerful and having the complete mastery by turns of one man, that is to say, inhabited by both a devil and an angel seems to have been realized, if all we hear is true, in the character of the extraordinary man whose name we have written above. Our own impression of the nature of Edgar A. Poe, differs in some important degree, however, from that which has been generally conveyed in the notices of his death.

"The Cask of Amontillado" is a short story by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the November 1846 issue of Godey's Lady's Book. The story, set in an unnamed Italian city at Carnival time, is about a man taking fatal revenge on a friend who, he believes, has insulted him. Like several of Poe's stories, and in keeping with the 19th-century fascination with the subject, the narrative follows a person being buried alive – in this case, by immurement. As in "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart", Poe conveys the story from the murderer's perspective.

In "The Assignation" — we have the most romantic story Poe ever wrote. A discerning critic well said that it is "such a mixture of bitter and sweet that it clings to one's memory like a ballad. The characters are sharply and consistently drawn, motives clear and convincing the more incredible the action grows.

Father Brown (Chesterton's sharp-witted detective priest) and Flambeau (the reformed master-thief and Brown's constant companion) are on a little vacation in Norfolk, invited to visit the mysterious Prince Saradine. It doesn't go well. Sure, Flambeau gets some good fishing in, but there's also a duel with rapiers, a couple of murders, a hanging, a case of mistaken identity, an awkward family reunion, and a gang of surly Sicilians.

"The Imp of the Perverse" is a short story by 19th-century American author and critic Edgar Allan Poe. In the story, the narrator commits murder to inherit a man's estate. A coroner attributes the death to an act of God, and the narrator benefits from his crime. Several years later, the narrator starts obsessing about a possible confession for his crime.

Berenice — A Tale. Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon like the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon like the rainbow! How is it that from Beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? — from the covenant of Peace a simile of sorrow?

Two men appeared simultaneously at the two ends of a sort of passage running along the side of the Apollo Theatre in the Adelphi. The evening daylight in the streets was large and luminous, opalescent and empty. The passage was comparatively long and dark, so each man could see the other as a mere black silhouette at the other end. Nevertheless, each man knew the other, even in that inky outline; for they were both men of striking appearance and they hated each other.

The Duel of Dr. Hirsch is a short story by Gilbert Keith Chesterton: M. Maurice Brun and M. Armand Armagnac were crossing the sunlit Champs Élysées with a kind of vivacious respectability. They were both short, brisk and bold. They both had black beards that did not seem to belong to their faces, after the strange French fashion which makes real hair look like artificial. They were both young. They were both atheists, with a depressing fixity of outlook but great mobility of exposition.

Certain of the great roads going north out of London continue far into the country a sort of attenuated and interrupted spectre of a street, with great gaps in the building, but preserving the line. Here will be a group of shops, followed by a fenced field or paddock, and then a famous public-house, and then perhaps a market garden or a nursery garden, and then one large private house, and then another field and another inn, and so on.

About twelve o'clock, one sultry night, in the month of August, and during the chivalrous reign of the third Edward, two seamen belonging to the crew of the "Free and Easy," a trading schooner plying between Sluys and the Thames, and then at anchor in that river, were much astonished to find themselves seated in the tap-room of an ale-house in the parish of St. Andrews, London — which ale-house bore for sign the portraiture of a "Jolly Tar.

"La musique," says Marmontel, with the same odd confusion of thought and language which leads him to give his very equivocal narratives the title of "Contes Moraux" — "la musique est le seul des talens qui jouissent de lui même; tous les autres veulent des temoins." He here confounds the pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the capacity for creating them.

"A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" is a fantastical short story written by Edgar Allan Poe. Set near Charlottesville, Virginia, it is the only story the author set in the state. It was first published in Godey's Lady's Book in April 1844. It was anthologized the following year in Tales, published in New York by Wiley and Putnam. In late November 1827, the unnamed narrator meets Augustus Bedloe. Because of ongoing problems with neuralgia, Bedloe has retained the exclusive services of a 70-year-old physician, Dr. Templeton, a practitioner of mesmerism.

Mr. Edward Nutt, the industrious editor of The Daily Reformer, sat at his desk, opening letters and marking proofs to the merry tune of a typewriter, worked by a vigorous young lady. He was a stoutish, fair man, in his shirt-sleeves; his movements were resolute, his mouth firm and his tones final; but his round, rather babyish blue eyes had a bewildered and even wistful look that rather contradicted all this. Nor indeed was the expression altogether misleading.

"The Flying Stars" is one of Chesterton's mysteries featuring Father Brown. It's actually the first of these short stories I've read and I picked it up more because it's a Christmas mystery than to meet Father Brown, even though he is a character I'd like to read more of. The story takes place at an English manor home on Boxing Day. A young lady and the young man who lives next door are present, as is the girl's father, Colonel Adams, a newly arrived uncle and a quite rich godfather.