The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Saint, by Antonio Fogazzaro

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Title: The Saint

Author: Antonio Fogazzaro

Commentator: William Roscoe Thayer

Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8455]
Posting Date: August 10, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SAINT ***

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, David Widger
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

THE SAINT

By Antonio Fogazzaro

Since the condemnation of _The Saint_ by the Congregation of the Index,
the publishers of the authorized translation of this novel feel that, in
justice to its author, Senator Antonio Fogazzaro, they owe to the public
a word of explanation by way of making plain (what the author has in
more than one letter made plain to them) how it comes about that, in
spite of the decree of the Index, the Senator sanctions the appearance
of the book in America. The explanation is found in the fact that the
American publishers secured, before the sentence of the Congregation had
been passed, the sanction for the publication of their translation--a
sanction which the author, as a loyal Catholic, could not have given
later, but which, once it was given, he did not feel justified in
withdrawing.

NEW YORK, July, 1906.

NOTE:

_The Saint_, though it is independent of Fogazzaro's earlier romances,
and though it explains itself completely when read in its entirety,
will perhaps be more readily understood and enjoyed, especially in the
opening chapters, if a few words are said with regard to certain of its
characters who have made an appearance in preceding stories by the
me author. All needful information of this kind is conveyed in the
following paragraph, for which we are indebted to Mrs. Crawford's
article, "The Saint in Fiction," which appeared in _The Fortnightly
Review_ for April, 1906:

"Readers of Fogazzaro's earlier novels will recognise in Piero Maironi,
the Saint, the son of the Don Franco Maironi who, in the _Piccolo Mondo
Antico_, gives his life for the cause of freedom, while he himself is
the hero of the _Piccolo Mondo Moderno_. For those who have not read
the preceding volumes it shou