The Project Gutenberg eBook, Linda Tressel, by Anthony Trollope

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Title: Linda Tressel

Author: Anthony Trollope

Release Date: July 7, 2008 [eBook #26002]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LINDA TRESSEL***

E-text prepared by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.

LINDA TRESSEL

by

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

First published anonymously in serial form October, 1867,
through May, 1868, in _Blackwood's Magazine_ and in book form
in 1868. Trollope's authorship was acknowledged when the book
was re-published a decade later.

CHAPTER I

The troubles and sorrows of Linda Tressel, who is the heroine of the
little story now about to be told, arose from the too rigid virtue
of her nearest and most loving friend,--as troubles will sometimes
come from rigid virtue when rigid virtue is not accompanied by sound
sense, and especially when it knows little or nothing of the softness
of mercy.

The nearest and dearest friend of Linda Tressel was her aunt, the
widow Staubach--Madame Charlotte Staubach, as she had come to be
called in the little town of Nuremberg where she lived. In Nuremberg
all houses are picturesque, but you shall go through the entire city
and find no more picturesque abode than the small red house with the
three gables close down by the river-side in the Schuett island--the
little island made by the river Pegnitz in the middle of the town.
They who have seen the widow Staubach's house will have remembered
it, not only because of its bright colour and its sharp gables,
but also because of the garden which runs between the house and
the water's edge. And yet the garden was no bigger than may often
nowadays be seen in the balconies of the mansions of Paris and of
London. Here Linda Tressel lived with her aunt, and here also Linda
had been born.

Linda was the orphan of Herr Tressel, who had for many years been
what we may call town-clerk to the magistrates of Nuremberg. Chance
in middle life had taken him to Cologne--a German city indeed, as was
his own, but a city so far away from Nuremberg that its people and
its manners were as strange to him as though he ha