"Gregory Maguire - Mirror Mirror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maguire Gregory)

I am a mercenary with the French disease
I am a girl who lived among stones
I am a woman who poisoned my enemies
I am a rock and my brothers are rocks
I am a cleric who trafficked in curses
I am a gooseboy or am I a goose
I am a girl who did little wrong
I am a gooseboy or am I a boy
I am a farmer who stole something sacred
I am a monster who let the child go
I am a dog with an unlikely past
I am a hunter who followed the coffin
I am a girl who did something wrong
I am the other side of snow
I am a mirror a mirror am I
Mirror mirror on the wall
Who is the fairest one of all
D O PEOPLEsay that I am both your father and your lover? Let the world, that heap of
vermin as ridiculous as they are feeble-minded, believe the most absurd tales about the mighty!
You must know that for those destined to dominate others, the ordinary rules of life are turned
upside down and duty acquires an entirely new meaning. Good and evil are carried off to a
higher, different plane. . . .
Remember this. Walk straight ahead. Do only what you like, as long as it is of some use to
you. Leave hesitation and scruples to small minds, to plebeians and subordinates. One
consideration alone is worthy of youтАФthe elevation of the House of Borgia, the elevation of
yourself.


тАФAlexander VIтАЩs speech to Lucrezia Borgia, from Arthur de GobineauтАЩsSc├иnes
historiques de la Renaissance (1877), as quoted inThe Borgias by Ivan Cloulas (1989)


O NE DAYsome Lombard masons working near the cloister of Sta. Maria Nuova just off
the Via Appia had opened a sarcophagus and found the body of a young Roman woman of
about fifteen, so well preserved that it seemed alive. A crowd had gathered around and
admired the girlтАЩs rosy skin, her half-open lips revealing very white teeth, her ears, her black
lashes, dark, wide-open eyes, and beautiful hair, done in a knot . . .


тАФThe Borgias, ibid.
 Contents

E-Book Extra: тАЬLittle Snow WhiteтАЭ by the Brothers Grimm
(read the original version of the classic fairy tale)
Mirror mirror on the wall...
Epigraphs
The roofs of Montefiore

1502
The name of the world