Excerpt from St. Peter's Umbrella: A Novel In a romantic environment of out-of - the-world Sl'ovak villages, with a ragged r'ed Umbrella and a brand-new brass Caldron as the good and evil geniuses of the piece respectively. The, Um brella, which is worth a king's ransom, is sold for a couple Of fiorims to the white Jew of the district, becomes the tutelary deity - or shall I say J the fetish - Of half a dozen parishes, and is only recovered, after the lapse of years, by its lawful owner, when, by a singular irony of fate, it has become absolutely valueless - from a pecuniary point of view. The Caldron, on the other hand, which is erroneously supposed to contain count less treasures, and is the outcome of a grimly prac tical joke, proves a regular box of Pandora, and originates a famous lawsuit which lasts ten years and ruins three families - who deserve no better fate: How the Umbrella and the Caldron first come into the story the reader must be left to find out for himself. Suffice it to say that grouped around them are very many pleasant and - by way of piquant contrast - a Sprinkling Of unpleasant personages, whose adventures and vicissitudes will, I am convinced, supply excellent entertain. 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.