“Well, that’s the Renaissance”

Wenzel Schaschek, bank clerk, has stolen from a museum a painting of Eleonor, the Duchess of Albanera. The painted Duchess has begun to tell Schaschek of her life: after killing her first husband, she was determined to forgive her second husband anything. But he betrayed her by taking a lover, so she took that lover for herself, enslaved him to her body, and “worked him” until he plunged a dagger into her husband’s heart.


Johannes Urzidil, “The Duchess of Albanera.” In The Last Bell. Translated from the German by David Burnett. (London: Pushkin Press, 2017.)

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