Explore "Ascanio" by Alexandre Dumas on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
We ask pardon for the bitter misanthropy of this title. It is the fact that the present chapter will exhibit scarcely any other coherent principle than sorrow, and therein will resemble life. The reflection is not new, as a celebrated character in comic opera would say, but it is consoling, in that it will perhaps he accepted as an apology by the reader, whom we are about to lead, even as Virgil led Dante, from despair to despair.
No offence is intended either to the reader or to Virgil.