Excerpt from The Complete Works of Theophile Gautier, Vol. 11: Militona, the Nightingales, Omphale, the Marchioness's Lap-Dog, Jack and Jill, the Thousand and Second Night, Elias Wildmanstadius, David Jovard, the Bowl of Punch Very different is the short, sweet tale called The Nightingales. Written for young people, and appear ing first in a publication intended for them, it was com posed in order to explain an engraving, - a common practice in those days, as Gautier has told us himself. But no one remembers the engraving, and everybody who has ever read The Nightingales keeps the quaint story in mind. It is a very delicate bit of work, written in a subdued tone, but none the less very telling. Gautier loved music, and in this brief sketch he has praised it as it deserves. The Marchioness's lap-dog is in another strain. This time it is the eighteenth century which has at tracted the author, and he has made a dainty little story out ofa mere trifle, with just enough indication of the licentiousness of the age to be in keeping with the model he followed, yet not enough of it to spoil what is really a deftly touched story of a man's whim and a woman's caprice. Omphale is purely fantastic; it does not pretend to be anything else. It belongs to the same class of story as The Mummy's Foot, Arria Marcella, and The Vampire. It is not as long as any of these. 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.