Book Description

Excerpt from The Firebrand of the Indies: A Romance of Francis Xavier One chilly autumn evening, early in the sixteenth century, a weary, mud-stained traveller was limping along the Rue Saint Jacques, the principal street of the University Quarter of Paris, leading a heavily laden donkey. In spite of his shabby cloak and worn boots, and the fact that his steeple-crowned hat, battered by wind and weather, lacked the fashionable plume; in spite of his lameness and his forty years, his was no common appearance. The dark, worn face, high forehead and keen eyes gave him an air of distinction, and the carriage of his head and shoulders was both aristocratic and military. As he led his tired donkey over the cobbles, he looked with grave interest from side to side at the great blocks of college buildings about him, with their bewildering mass of gabled and turreted roofs, amongst which a church spire shot up here and there; and once or twice he stopped for a brief glance through one of the arched gateways into a wide quadrangle, and listened to the droning voices from the lecture rooms beyond. "Where is the College Montaigu?" About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.