He was half-way upstairs, but when he turned round and saw Laura he suddenly puffed out his cheeks and goggled his eyes at her. It was first published as the lead story in the collection The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922). That said, Dumas’s version is less a religion-tinged ghost story and more a cross between a romantic period drama and a psychological thriller.

I say, Laura," said Laurie very fast, "you might just give a squiz at my coat before this afternoon. Just for a moment she had another glimpse of that poor woman and those little children, and the body being carried into the house. That really was extravagant, for the little cottages were in a lane to themselves at the very bottom of a steep rise that led up to the house. If you're going to stop a band playing every time some one has an accident, you'll lead a very strenuous life. Now, if we put this chesterfield against the wall and move everything out of the room except the chairs, don’t you think?

And it seemed to her that kisses, voices, tinkling spoons, laughter, the smell of crushed grass were somehow inside her. And again she began, "You'll excuse her, miss, I'm sure," and her face, swollen too, tried an oily smile.

Don't be afraid, my lass,"—and now her voice sounded fond and sly, and fondly she drew down the sheet—"'e looks a picture.I came to understand what the incredible passion was that these people had for this man, and what he really represented to them … As I was going down there on the bus, I had lots of time to think and make notes. Laura put back the receiver, flung her arms over her head, took a deep breath, stretched and let them fall. Nothing but lilies—canna lilies, big pink flowers, wide open, radiant, almost frighteningly alive on bright crimson stems. Laura wished now that she had not got the bread-and-butter, but there was nowhere to put it, and she couldn't possibly throw it away. They were like bright birds that had alighted in the Sheridans’ garden for this one afternoon, on their way to—where?

He, too, meets a beautiful woman, who resists his attempts to remove the “ungainly ruff” (and the bejeweled velvet necklace beneath it) from her neck. Iterations of his tale appeared in France during the mid-1800s, most notably Alexandre Dumas’s novella La Femme au collier de velours, or The Woman With the Velvet Necklace, published in 1849. Don’t be afraid, my lass,”—and now her voice sounded fond and sly, and fondly she drew down the sheet—“’e looks a picture.Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who all are happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes. There’s plenty of sociopolitical subtext in the stories set during the French Revolution, too; you could, for example, read them as cautionary tales against letting an idealism that only exists in the imagination obscure real-world atrocities. Alas, Wolfgang continues that behavior in Paris—where, by the way, the French Revolution is in full swing— becoming “a literary [ghoul], feeding in the charnel-house of decayed literature” and retreating further and further into his own imagination.

They were like bright birds that had alighted in the Sheridans' garden for this one afternoon, on their way to—where? They were like trees you imagined growing on a desert island, proud, solitary, lifting their leaves and fruits to the sun in a kind of silent splendour. It will only be a very scratch meal—just the sandwich crusts and broken meringue-shells and what’s left over. It's so delicious to have an excuse for eating out of doors, and besides, she loved having to arrange things; she always felt she could do it so much better than anybody else.Its simplicity—in addition to the ubiquity of Schwartz’s books during the late 20th century—might help explain how the story, not even 200 words to begin with, became the most iconic example of its microgenre: You can retell it in just a few sentences. A late 18th-century illustration of the guillotine in Paris from the Collection of Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Wherever you looked there were couples strolling, bending to the flowers, greeting, moving on over the lawn.