A WORD FROM THE TRANSLATOR.
A few words of explanation seem in order anent the aim and purport of this small volume, otherwise the tales of which it is composed may seem to the critical so many disjecta membra, without form and void, fit subjects for the waste-basket.
Briefly, then, it is a collection of those short stories that the French so excel in; the "Tales of To-day" being selected from among the most famous of our modern raconteurs, while the "Tales of Other Days" are some of those that served to amuse and delight our fathers and grandfathers forty, fifty, sixty years ago, the intention being to give some faint idea of the difference (if any) that characterizes the literary methods of the tyro epochs.
Versatile Paris witnessed in 1830 two revolutions, of which it is hard to tell which was the more important in its results: one was the fall of the Bourbons, the other the emancipation of French literature from the bondage in which it had until then been held by the Classicists. Victor Hugo, the highpriest of the new cult, produced his Hernani on the stage in 1830;
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