_Translated by WALTER LEARNED, with fifty pen-and-ink drawings by ALBERT E. STERNER, and an introduction by BRANDER MATTHEWS_ The _conte_ is a form of fiction in which the French have always delighted and in which they have always excelled, from the days of the _jongleurs_ and the _trouveres_, past the periods of La Fontaine and Voltaire, down to the present. The _conte_ is a tale, something more than a sketch, it may be, and something less than a short story. In verse it is at times but a mere rhymed anecdote, or it may attain almost to the direct swiftness of a ballad. The _Canterbury Tales_ are _contes_, most of them, if not all; and so are some of the _Tales of a Wayside Inn_. The free-…
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