The Brigand of Radicofani by Hilaire Belloc

It is with the utmost pleasure that I am able to communicate to the English-speaking world a literary document of capital importance which my readers had only too great reason to mourn as lost. It will be remembered that my poor friend the Hack, recently deceased in the neighbourhood of the King's road, suffered in his last hours from the fear that the world might never receive his two masterpieces which he had so long promised them, "The Story of the Hungry Student" and "The Brigand of Radicofani. " It will also be remembered that on reaching his humble lodgings after the publication of the first, I discovered him to be dead, and feared, therefore, that the second of these two classics would never be discovered.

I am delighted to say that a Rag and Bottle Merchant and Dealer in Kitchen Stuff near The World's End (which is a landmark in that neighbourhood) has been found in possession of the precious paper, which by a providential accident is still legible, although it had been used to wrap up two boot-brushes and a second-hand pot of blacking. Such coincidences are not unknown in the history of English Letters.