



Produced by David Widger







THE MONK AND THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER

By Adolphe Danziger De Castro and Ambrose Bierce

1911

Under the name of G. A. Danziger I wrote in the year 1889 a story
founded on a German tale, which I called _The Monk and the Hangman's
Daughter_. The story was tragic but I gave it a happy ending. Submitting
it to the late Ambrose Bierce, asking him to revise the story, he
suggested the retention of the tragic part and so revised it. The story
was published and the house failed.

When in 1900 a publisher desired to bring out the story provided I gave
it a happy ending, I submitted the matter to Bierce and on August 21,
1900, he wrote me a long letter on the subject of which the following is
an extract:

'I have read twice and carefully, your proposed addition to _The Monk_,
and you must permit me to speak plainly, if not altogether agreeably, of
it. It will not do for these reasons and others:

'The book is almost perfect as you wrote it; the part of the work that
pleases me least is _my_ part (underscores Bierce's). I am surprised
that you should yield to the schoolgirl desire for that shallowest of
all literary devices, a "happy ending," by which all the pathos of the
book is effaced to "make a woman holiday." It is unworthy of you. So
much vii did I feel this unworthiness that I hesitated a long time
before even deciding to have so much of "odious ingenuity" and "mystery"
as your making Benedicta the