PREFATORY NOTE
EÇA DE QUEIROZ (born 1846, died 1900) was probably Portugal’s greatest prose-writer of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. He is known to us mainly by that splendid romance, cousin basil, which has appeared In English under the title of “Dragon’s Teeth,”[1] but the CORRESPONDENCE OF FRADIQUE MENDES reveals a versatility of talent in this satyrist, observer, and critic of life which even the foremost novelists have lacked, and THE CITY AND THE MOUNTAINS contains pages of landscape-painting which are already classical. The prose-poem here translated shows that his journey through Palestine had penetrated the Master of Realism with the spirit of the East and calls to mind scenes in another book of his, THE RELIC, which sounds like an echo of Flaubert. The frontispiece is a copy of a striking water-colour sketch by the King of Portugal offered to the Count of Arnoso on the occasion of the fifteenth representation of the latter’s charming dramatised version of “The Sweet Miracle.” His Majesty has graciously approved and the Count has very kindly permitted its reproduction here.
Other short stories of Eça de Queiroz will follow if the present one continues to meet with a favourable reception.