The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Infant's Skull, by Eugène Sue, Translated by Daniel De Leon

Title: The Infant's Skull

Or The End of the World. A Tale of the Millennium

Author: Eugène Sue

Release Date: March 24, 2010 [eBook #31759]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INFANT'S SKULL***

E-text prepared by Chuck Greif
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from scanned images of public domain material generously made available by
the Google Books Library Project
(http://books.google.com/)

Copyright, 1904, by the New York Labor News Company

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

Among the historic phenomena of what may be called "modern antiquity," there is none comparable to that which was witnessed on the first day of the year 1000, together with its second or adjourned catastrophe thirty-two years later. The end of the world, at first daily expected by the Apostles, then postponed—upon the authority of Judaic apocalyptic writings, together with the Revelations of St. John the Divine,—to the year 1000, and then again to thirty-two years later, until it was finally adjourned sine die, was one of those beliefs, called "theologic," that have had vast and disastrous mundane effect. The Infant's Skull; or, The End of the World, figures at that period. It is one of that series of charming stories by Eugene Sue in which historic personages and events are so artistically grouped that, without the fiction losing by the otherwise solid facts, and without the solid facts suffering by the fiction, both are enhanced, and combinedly act as a flash-light upon the past—and no less so upon the future.

As with all the stories of this series by the talented Sue, The Infant's Skull; or, The End of the World, although, one of the shortest, rescues invaluable historic facts from the dark and dusty recesses where only the privileged few can otherwise reach them. Thus its educational value is equal to its entertaining merit. It is a gem in the necklace of gems that the distinguished author has felicitously named The Mysteries of the People; or The History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages.

DANIEL DE LEON.

New York, April 20, 1904.

INDEX