Robert Louis Stevenson was a master storyteller. This fabled collection of stories ranges from the macabre to an innocent tale of unexpected consequences.

A Lodging for the Night
This is a story of contrasts with a little historical context sprinkled in. Contrast in the lives of two individuals. One is a thief who is party to a crime. The other is a respectable citizen of society. Rich and poor, exposed and protected. Master Francis Villon was an actual French poet / thief that lived in Paris from roughly 1431- c1463. His famous line from one of his poems was “Where are the snows of yesteryear?”

It is snowing on a dark night and no one is on the streets except for a patrol company. The scene is set in a small house at the back of St. John’s cemetery. A man is murdered and robbed of his money. Francis Villon flees the scene. He eventually ends up at a nobleman’s house who takes him in and feeds him. A discussion ensues and the difference between the two becomes agonizingly apparent and Francis is eventually escorted out of the house.

“In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for practical existence.” Francis is portrayed as the starving artist. Stevenson seems sympathetic to the plight of this artist.

The Sire De Maletroit’s Door
“When things fall out opportunely for the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical as to how or why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest, oddities and revolutions in our sublunary things.”

A young cavalier goes out one night to visit a friend. Upon his return he stumbles into an unexpected arrangement of strangeness turned love.

The Suicide Club
This short story is written in three parts. It was originally part of the book New Arabian Nights.

Prince Florizel of Bohemia and Colonel Geraldine are partners in adventure. They set out upon their normal routine as Godal and Hammersmith and our ensnared by an adventure of a most heinous nature.

It reads better than a Sherlock Holmes story.

The Body-Snatcher
A morose tale based loosely on the events of 1820s Edinburgh where two criminals sold bodies to a Doctor Knox for the purpose of anatomical research. This was a period when medical research was growing and there began to be a shortage of legal cadavers due to a decrease in criminal executions. A legal cadaver was one born from a criminal execution. The two men began by robbing graves for bodies, which then escalated into the murder of destitute individuals of society. They were eventually caught by James and Ann Gray.

“… sat, with his glass in his right hand, in a state of melancholy alcoholic saturation.”

In the story, Fettes and MacFarlane are charged with the procurement of bodies for the use in Dr. K’s anatomy class. ( )