Excerpt from The Distant Lamp In the year 1212 there lived in the little town of Chateauneuf, which is now a part of Tours, a prosperous merchant and money-changer named Nicholas Rigny. Sharp and masterful in his business, a man without mercy where money was concerned, he surrendered everything to do with the family life into the hands of his wife. 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.