This, the last volume of THE GERMAN CLASSICS, was intended to be devoted to the contemporary drama exclusively. But the harvest of the contemporary German Short Story is so rich that an overflow from Volume XIX had to be accommodated in Volume XX. It is hoped that this has not seriously crippled the representative character of the dramatic selections, although the editors are fully aware of the importance of such dramatists as Herbert Eulenberg, Wilhelm Schmidtbonn, or Fritz von Unruh. The principal tendencies, at any rate, of the hopeful and eager activity which distinguishes the German stage of today are brought out in this volume with sufficient clearness, especially in combination with the selections from Schoenherr and Hofmannsthal in Volumes XVI and XVII. The European war, unfortunately, has prevented us from making the selections from contemporary German painting in Volumes XIX and XX as varied and representative as we had hoped. KUNO FRANCKE. JAKOB WASSERMANN * * * * * * CLARISSA MIRABEL (1906) TRANSLATED BY JULIA FRANKLIN In the little town of Rodez, situated on the western side of the Cevennes and washed by the waters of the river Aveyron, there lived a lawyer by the name of Fualdes, a commonplace man, neither good nor bad. Notwithstanding his advanced age, he had only recently retired from affairs, and his finances were in such a bad shape that he was obliged, in the beginning of the year 1817, to dispose of his estate of La Morne. With the proceeds he meant to retire to some quiet spot and live on the interest of his money. One evening--it was the nineteenth of March--he received from the purchaser of the estate, President Seguret, the residue of the purchase-money in bills and securities, and, after locking the papers in his desk, he left the house, having told the housekeeper that he had to go to La Morne once more in order to make some necessary arrangements with the tenant. He neither reached La Morne nor returned to his home. The following morning a tailor's wife from the village of Aveyron saw his body lying in a shallow of the river, ran to Rodez and fetched some people back with her. The rocky slope was precipitously steep at that point, rising to a height of about forty feet. A great piece of the narrow footpath which led from Rodez to the vineyards had crumbled away, and it was doubtless owing to that circumstance that the unfortunate man had been precipitated to the bottom. It had rained very heavily the day before, and the soil on top had, according to the testimony of a number of people who worked in the vineyards, been loose for a long time. It seemed a singular fact that there was a deep gash in the throat of the dead man; but as jagged stones projected all over the rocky surface of the slope, such an injury explained itself. On examination of the steep wall, no traces of blood were found on stone or earth. The rain had washed away everything.