Book Description

Excerpt from The Virgins of the Rocks: Translated From the Italian of Gabriele D'annunzio With these mortal eyes I beheld within a brief space of time three peerless souls unfold and blossom, and then wither away and perish one by one: the most beautiful, most passionate, and most miserable souls ever embodied in the latest descendants of a haughty race. From the scenes where their desolation, their pride, and their grace wandered every day, clear and terrible thoughts came to me, such as the most ancient ruins of illustrious cities had never suggested. In hopes of unravelling the mystery of their strange ascendency, I used to explore the depths of the vast ancestral mirrors, where, often unnoticed by themselves, their three figures were reflected bathed in a pallor like that which heralds dissolution after death; and I gazed long and earnestly at the old, worn-out things which they touched with their chilled or fevered hands, using the same gestures perhaps as had been used by other hands long since crumbled into dust. 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.