Bagatelle and Some Other Diversions

Bagatelle and Some Other Diversions by Marjorie Bowen is about Captain Engel van Dollart as he fulfills the dirty deeds of his master, the General Aspremont Reckheim. Excerpt: «The Author who offers these tales has called them Bagatelle (a game, a diversion, a trifle), having been moved to write them through the poignant appeal of those aspects of the past, the decorations of peoples and age long since gone, which to most appear but a game, a trifle—bagatelle. They might be named, too, stories of empty palaces, of closed mansions, of deserted castles, built to affront the enemy in the game of war, or to entertain the friend in the game of pleasure.»