While a well-off provincial family gathers for the funeral lunch of their aunt, a ragged old man calling himself Saint Anthony of Padua knocks at the door and insists on seeing the body. The servant Virginie lets him in, the nephews Gustave and Achille are outraged, and the miracle he works is treated as a breach of good manners. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos translates.
A short, sly satire on bourgeois piety from the Nobel-winning author of The Blue Bird. Download the free EPUB.