“Mr Ronald Firbank has always had his own manner, and a very modish one. In _Santal_ the elegance, almost dandyism, of his style has given just a faint hint of flippancy to a tale in itself very dignified, and full of an unexpected warmth and delicacy of feeling. It is a _nouvelle_--who could call a thing of such distinction a long short story?--with the vivid richly-coloured background of the East.... Something there is, too, of irony and detachment, as though the Mr Firbank of _Valmouth_ and of _The Princess Zoubaroff_ were secretly smiling a little cynically at his unexpected tumble into sentiment.” SOUTHPORT GUARDIAN: “The incense of Santal pervades the book throughout. Mr Firbank is a discriminating artist; he has an exotic sense of words and of colour. Seldom have we met in so short a space so intense a characterisation of pilgrimage or so vivid a picture of the Algerian scene.” TIMES: “Mr Firbank here drops his artificiality and gives a vividly real study of an Eastern city ... a vivid glimpse of a world strange--to a European--but convincingly true.” _IN PREPARATION_ A STUDY OF WEST INDIAN LIFE AND MANNERS FOOTNOTES: [1] The name by which the future saint was sometimes called among her friends. [2] Always a humiliating recollection with her in after years. _Vide_: ‘Confessions.’ [3] _Winds_, pronounced as we’re told, “in poetry.” [4] The Capital of Pisuerga. [5] The recollection of this was never quite forgotten. [6] _Vide_ Botticelli. [7] In Pisuerga compliments are apt to rival in this respect those of the ardent South. [8] The missing articles were:-- 5 chasubles. A relic-casket in lapis and diamonds, containing the Tongue of St Thelma. 4¾ yards of black lace, said to have “belonged” to the Madonna. [9] Although the account of Princess Elsie’s arrival in Kairoulla is signed “Green Jersey,” it seems not unlikely that “Eva Schnerb” herself was the reporter on this eventful occasion. [10] The Théâtre Diana; a Music Hall dedicated to Spanish Zarzuelas and Operettes. It enjoyed a somewhat doubtful reputation. [11] The Hon. ‘Eddy’ Monteith had succumbed: the shock received by meeting a jackal while composing a sonnet had been too much for him. His tomb is in the Vale of Akko, beside the River Dis. Alas, for the _triste_ obscurity of his end! [12] Author of _In the Dusk of the Dawn_. [Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printer errors corrected silently. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.] End of Project Gutenberg's The Flower Beneath the Foot, by Ronald Firbank