Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

Home > Fiction > Collected Works of Gaston Leroux > Page 519
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 519

by Gaston Leroux


  ‘Mathis Müller might have already been dead for all the sign of life he gave, when a man with bare arms, carrying an axe on his shoulder, stepped forward from the side where he had hitherto remained in the background.

  ‘This man placed his hand upon the prisoner’s head, waved the two warders aside, lifted the axe and struck a terrible blow. Nevertheless he had to strike a second time before the head fell. Then he picked it up by the hair and stood erect.

  ‘How was it that I was able to watch the unspeakably horrible sight until the end? Yet I could not remove my eyes from this scene of blood, and it seemed as though there was still something for me to see, and indeed my eyes did see... they saw, when holding in his shaking hand the abominable trophy, the executioner drew himself up and raised his eyes.

  ‘I uttered a piercing shriek, “Herbert!” and fell unconscious.’

  ‘Now, monsieur, you know my story. I had married the public executioner. The axe which I had discovered in the little study was the executioner’s axe; the bloodstained clothes were the executioner’s clothes.

  ‘Next day I fled to the house of an old relative, and I very nearly lost my reason; and I don’t know how it is that I am still in this world.

  ‘As for my husband who could not live without me, for he loved me more than anything on earth, he was found two months later hanging in our room. I received a last letter from him:

  ‘“Forgive me, Elizabeth, I have tried every sort of occupation. I was dismissed as soon as it was discovered that I was the son of my father. I was forced at an early age to make up my mind to take up the succession of his work. You will understand now how it is that the office of public executioner descends from father to son. I was born an honest man, and the only crime that I have committed was to conceal the truth from you... Farewell!’”

  While I stood gazing in dumb amazement at the spot in the lake where the lady in black had thrown the little gold axe, she disappeared in the distance.

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  We are proud to present a hyperlinked listing of our complete catalogue of English titles, with new titles being added every month. Buying direct from our website means you can make great savings and take advantage of our instant Updates service. You can even purchase an entire series (Super Set) at a special discounted price.

  Only from our website can readers purchase a complete Parts Edition of our titles. When you buy a Parts Edition, you will receive a folder of your chosen author’s works, with each novel, play, poetry collection, non-fiction book and more divided into its own special eBook. This allows you to read individual novels etc. and to know precisely where you are in an eBook. For more information, please visit our Parts Edition page.

  Series Contents

  Series One

  Anton Chekhov

  Charles Dickens

  D. H. Lawrence

  Dickensiana Volume I

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  George Eliot

  H. G. Wells

  Henry James

  Ivan Turgenev

  Jack London

  James Joyce

  Jane Austen

  Joseph Conrad

  Leo Tolstoy

  Louisa May Alcott

  Mark Twain

  Oscar Wilde

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Sir Walter Scott

  The Brontës

  Thomas Hardy

  Virginia Woolf

  Wilkie Collins

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Series Two

  Alexander Pushkin

  Alexandre Dumas

  Andrew Lang

  Anthony Trollope

  Bram Stoker

  Christopher Marlowe

  Daniel Defoe

  Edith Wharton

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  G. K. Chesterton

  Gustave Flaubert

  H. Rider Haggard

  Herman Melville

  Honoré de Balzac

  J. W. von Goethe

  Jules Verne

  L. Frank Baum

  Lewis Carroll

  Marcel Proust

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Nikolai Gogol

  O. Henry

  Rudyard Kipling

  Tobias Smollett

  Victor Hugo

  William Shakespeare

  Series Three

  Ambrose Bierce

  Ann Radcliffe

  Ben Jonson

  Charles Lever

  Émile Zola

  Ford Madox Ford

  Geoffrey Chaucer

  George Gissing

  George Orwell

  Guy de Maupassant

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Henrik Ibsen

  Henry David Thoreau

  Henry Fielding

  J. M. Barrie

  James Fenimore Cooper

  John Buchan

  John Galsworthy

  Jonathan Swift

  Kate Chopin

  Katherine Mansfield

  L. M. Montgomery

  Laurence Sterne

  Mary Shelley

  Sheridan Le Fanu

  Washington Irving

  Series Four

  Arnold Bennett

  Arthur Machen

  Beatrix Potter

  Bret Harte

  Captain Frederick Marryat

  Charles Kingsley

  Charles Reade

  G. A. Henty

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Edgar Wallace

  E. M. Forster

  E. Nesbit

  George Meredith

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Jerome K. Jerome

  John Ruskin

  Maria Edgeworth

  M. E. Braddon

  Miguel de Cervantes

  M. R. James

  R. M. Ballantyne

  Robert E. Howard

  Samuel Johnson

  Stendhal

  Stephen Crane

  Zane Grey

  Series Five

  Algernon Blackwood

  Anatole France

  Beaumont and Fletcher

  Charles Darwin

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton

  Edward Gibbon

  E. F. Benson

  Frances Hodgson Burnett

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  George Bernard Shaw

  George MacDonald

  Hilaire Belloc

  John Bunyan

  John Webster

  Margaret Oliphant

  Maxim Gorky

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Radclyffe Hall

  Robert W. Chambers

  Samuel Butler

  Samuel Richardson

  Sir Thomas Malory

  Thomas Carlyle

  William Harrison Ainsworth

  William Dean Howells

  William Morris

  Series Six

  Anthony Hope

  Aphra Behn

  Arthur Morrison

  Baroness Emma Orczy

  Captain Mayne Reid

  Charlotte M. Yonge

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  E. W. Hornung

  Ellen Wood

  Frances Burney

  Frank Norris

  Frank R. Stockton

  Hall Caine

  Horace Walpole

  One Thousand and One Nights

  R. Austin Freeman

  Rafael Sabatini

  Saki

  Samuel Pepys

  Sir Issac Newton

  Stanley J. Weyman

  Thomas De Quincey

  Thomas Middleton

  Voltaire

  William Hazlitt

  William Hope Hodgson

  Series Seven

  Adam Smith

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Confucius

  David Hume

  E. M. Delafield

  E. Phillips Oppenheim

 
Edmund Burke

  Ernest Hemingway

  Frances Trollope

  Galileo Galilei

  Guy Boothby

  Hans Christian Andersen

  Ian Fleming

  Immanuel Kant

  Karl Marx

  Kenneth Grahame

  Lytton Strachey

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Michel de Montaigne

  René Descartes

  Richard Marsh

  Sax Rohmer

  Sir Richard Burton

  Talbot Mundy

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  W. W. Jacobs

  Series Eight

  Anna Katharine Green

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  The Brothers Grimm

  C. S. Lewis

  Charles and Mary Lamb

  Elizabeth von Arnim

  Ernest Bramah

  Francis Bacon

  Gilbert and Sullivan

  Grant Allen

  Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Hugh Walpole

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  John Locke

  John Muir

  Joseph Addison

  Lafcadio Hearn

  Lord Dunsany

  Marie Corelli

  Niccolò Machiavelli

  Ouida

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Sigmund Freud

  Theodore Dreiser

  Walter Pater

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Series Nine

  Aldous Huxley

  August Strindberg

  Booth Tarkington

  C. S. Forester

  Erasmus

  Eugene Sue

  Fergus Hume

  George Moore

  Gertrude Stein

  Giovanni Boccaccio

  Izaak Walton

  J. M. Synge

  Johanna Spyri

  John Galt

  Maurice Leblanc

  Max Brand

  Molière

  Norse Sagas

  R. D. Blackmore

  R. S. Surtees

  Sir Thomas More

  Stephen Leacock

  The Harvard Classics

  Thomas Love Peacock

  Thomas Paine

  William James

  Series Ten

  A. E. W. Mason

  Abraham Lincoln

  Baruch Spinoza

  Carolyn Wells

  Charles Brockden Brown

  Earl Derr Biggers

  Evelyn Waugh

  F. Marion Crawford

  Fred M. White

  Frederick Douglass

  Gaston Leroux

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  George Berkeley

  Howard Pyle

  John Kendrick Bangs

  John Steinbeck

  John Stuart Mill

  J. S. Fletcher

  Martin Luther

  Sherwood Anderson

  Thomas Dekker

  Thomas Hobbes

  Thomas Jefferson

  Willa Cather

  William Faulkner

  William Le Queux

  Series Eleven

  A. Merritt

  Blaise Pascal

  Charles W. Chesnutt

  Dashiell Hammett

  Dinah Craik

  Elizabeth Inchbald

  François Rabelais

  George Griffith

  George du Maurier

  Hamlin Garland

  Hugh Lofting

  Joel Chandler Harris

  John Calvin

  M. P. Shiel

  Matthew Lewis

  Nevil Shute

  Olaf Stapledon

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Philip Massinger

  Raymond Chandler

  Romain Rolland

  Sabine Baring-Gould

  Sarah Orne Jewett

  Thomas Aquinas

  Thomas Browne

  William Wycherley

  Ancient Classics

  Achilles Tatius

  Aeschines

  Aeschylus

  Ammianus Marcellinus

  Apollodorus

  Appian

  Apuleius

  Apollonius of Rhodes

  Aristophanes

  Aristotle

  Arrian

  Athenaeus

  Augustine

  Aulus Gellius

  Bacchylides

  Bede

  Callimachus

  Cassius Dio

  Cato

  Catullus

  Cicero

  Claudian

  Clement of Alexandria

  Cornelius Nepos

  Demosthenes

  Dio Chrysostom

  Diodorus Siculus

  Dionysius of Halicarnassus

  Diogenes Laërtius

  Ennius

  Epictetus

  Euclid

  Euripides

  Eusebius

  Eutropius

  Florus

  Frontius

  Fronto

  Gregory I

  Herodian

  Herodotus

  Hesiod

  Hippocrates

  Homer

  Horace

  Isocrates

  Josephus

  Julian

  Julius Caesar

  Juvenal

  Livy

  Longus

  Lucan

  Lucian

  Lucretius

  Marcus Aurelius

  Manetho

  Martial

  Nonnus

  Onasander

  Origen

  Ovid

  Panyassis

  Pausanias

  Petronius

  Pindar

  Plato

  Plautus

  Pliny the Elder

  Pliny the Younger

  Plotinus

  Plutarch

  Polybius

  Procopius

  Propertius

  Ptolemy

  Quintus Curtius Rufus

  Quintus Smyrnaeus

  Sallust

  Sappho

  Seneca the Younger

  Septuagint

  Sidonius

  Sophocles

  Statius

  Strabo

  Suetonius

  Tacitus

  Terence

  Tertullian

  Theocritus

  Theophrastus

  Thucydides

  Tibullus

  Valerius Flaccus

  Varro

  Velleius Paterculus

  Virgil

  Vitruvius

  Xenophon

  Delphi Poets Series

  Adam Mickiewicz

  Adelaide Crapsey

  A. E. Housman

  Alexander Pope

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Andrew Marvell

  Beowulf

  Charles Baudelaire

  Charlotte Smith

  Christina Rossetti

  Confederation Poets

  D. H Lawrence

  Dante Alighieri

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Delphi Poetry Anthology

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Edmund Spenser

  Edmund Waller

  Edward Lear

  Edward Thomas

  Edwin Arlington Robinson

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Emily Dickinson

  Epic of Gilgamesh

  Ezra Pound

  Friedrich Schiller

  George Chapman

  George Herbert

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Giacomo Leopardi

  Hafez

  Heinrich Heine

  Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

  Henry Lawson

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Isaac Rosenberg

  James Russell Lowell

  Johan Ludvig Runeberg

  John Clare

  John Donne

  Jo
hn Dryden

  John Gay

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  John Gower

  John Keats

  John Milton

  John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

  Joseph Addison

  Kahlil Gibran

  Leigh Hunt

  Lord Byron

  Ludovico Ariosto

  Luís de Camões

  Mary Robinson

  Matthew Arnold

  Matthew Prior

  Medieval Poetry Collection

  Michael Drayton

  Nikolai Nekrasov

  Paul Laurence Dunbar

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Petrarch

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Robert Browning

  Robert Burns

  Robert Frost

  Robert Southey

  Rumi

  Rupert Brooke

  Saadi

  Sanskrit Epics

  Sara Teasdale

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Sir Philip Sidney

  Sir Thomas Wyatt

  Sir Walter Raleigh

  Thomas Chatterton

  Thomas Gray

  Thomas Hardy

  Thomas Hood

  Thomas Moore

  Thomas Otway

  Torquato Tasso

  T. S. Eliot

  W. B. Yeats

  Walter Savage Landor

  Walt Whitman

  Wilfred Owen

  William Blake

  William Congreve

  William Cowper

  William Wordsworth

  Masters of Art

  Albrecht Dürer

  Amedeo Modigliani

  Andrea Mantegna

  Anthony van Dyck

  Artemisia Gentileschi

  Berthe Morisot

  Camille Pissarro

  Canaletto

  Caravaggio

  Caspar David Friedrich

  Claude Lorrain

  Claude Monet

  Correggio

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Diego Velázquez

  Donatello

  Edgar Degas

  Édouard Manet

  Edvard Munch

  El Greco

  Eugène Delacroix

  Francisco Goya

  Georges Seurat

  Giotto

  Giovanni Bellini

  Gustave Courbet

  Gustav Klimt

  Hieronymus Bosch

  Hokusai

  Jacques-Louis David

  James Abbott McNeill Whistler

  Jan van Eyck

  Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

  J. M. W. Turner

  Johannes Vermeer

  John Constable

  John Everett Millais

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Masaccio

  Michelangelo

  Paul Cézanne

  Paul Gauguin

  Paul Klee

  Peter Paul Rubens

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Pieter Bruegel the Elder

  Piet Mondrian

  Sandro Botticelli

  Raphael

  Rembrandt van Rijn

  Thomas Gainsborough

  Tintoretto

 

‹ Prev