‘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
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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
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 519