Beatrice and Virgil Read Online Free PDF

Henry had never heard of it, had only ever read Flaubert's   Madame Bovary   . He was perplexed. He flipped through the story. It was longish and several sections were highlighted in bright yellow. He put it down, wearied at the effort he was being asked to make for a stranger. Perhaps this would be one reader whose letter he would ignore. But while making himself a coffee, he changed his mind. The question niggled at him: why would a reader send him a short story by a nineteenth-century French writer? He went to the study to look up the word   hospitator   . He found it in the full Oxford, the small print bulging under the magnifying glass: "one who receives or entertains hospitably." Well, if he was being invited... He sat down at the kitchen table and picked up the story again. It started:

    Julian's father and mother lived in a castle on the side of a hill in the middle of the woods.
       The four towers at the corners of the castle had pointed roofs with lead cladding, and the foundations of the walls stood on rock outcroppings that fell away steeply to the bottom of the moat.
       The stones of the courtyard were as clean as the paving stones in a church. Gargoyles in the form of dragons with their heads facing downward spat the rainwater into the cistern...
       Within... tapestries in the bedchambers gave protection from the cold... cupboards were bursting with linens... cellars piled high with casks of wine...
      So, a fable set during the Middle Ages. Henry pulled off the paper clip that held the story together and looked at the next page. Here was the lord and master:
       He would stride through his castle, always wrapped in a cloak of fox pelts, dispensing justice to his vassals...
      And here the mother, with the answer to her prayers:
       ... very fair of skin... After many prayers, she bore a son.
       ... great rejoicing... a feast that lasted three days and four nights...
      He read on:
       One night she awoke and saw in a ray of moonlight... the shadowy figure of an old man... a hermit... without moving his lips:
       "Oh, mother, rejoice, for your son will be a saint!"
      Farther down the page, the father also hears a prediction:
       ... was outside the postern gate... suddenly a beggar appeared before him... a Gypsy... stammered these incoherent words:
       "Oh! Oh! Your son!... Much blood!... Much glory!... Always blessed by fortune! The family of an emperor."
      The son, Julian:
       ... looked like the baby Jesus. He cut his teeth without ever crying.
       ... his mother taught him to sing. To teach him courage, his father lifted him up onto a big horse...
       A learned old monk taught him the Holy Scriptures...
       ... the lord of the castle gave feasts for his old companions in arms... they would share memories of the wars they had fought... the terrible wounds... Julian cried out with delight as he listened to them... his father had no doubt that he would one day be a conqueror. But... when he came out after the Angelus... the bowing paupers... would reach into his purse with such modesty... his mother truly expected he would one day be an archbishop.
       ... in the chapel... no matter how long the service... on his knees on his prie-dieu... hands joined in prayer.
      Henry then came upon an indication of his reader's intent in sending him the story, some paragraphs the reader had   neatly and precisely highlighted in yellow concerning young Julian:
       One day during mass, he looked up and noticed a little white mouse come out of a hole in the wall. It scurried along the first step to the altar, ran back and forth two or three times, then fled the way it had come. The following Sunday, he was troubled by the thought that he might see the mouse again. It did come back, and every Sunday he would wait for it and would become irritated, until he came to hate it and resolved to rid himself of it.
       Having closed the door and sprinkled crumbs of cake on the stairs, he