Miladi

Montreal, Canada: Ronalds Company Limited, 1931. 31 pp. Fine volume has lightly tanned spine, Slipcase is worn, nearly good. With frontis illustration and first-page vignette. One of 275 copies, printed as Christmas gifts. Miladi is set in the time of the French Revolution. ''As far back as I can remember I see again two quiet, smiling old ladies, the Marquise de Flavigny and Mlle. Odile. A great familiarity seemed to exist between these two aged women, who, while knitting for the poor, exchanged endless confidences, in a low voice, with an air of camaraderie, almost conspiracy. Some days, important house-cleaning days when no knitting was done, the two friends ransacked their clothes-presses, dusted and polished all day. // At the bottom of one of these mysterious presses, as in a shrine, reposed, upright in a glass box, an object for which the two ladies seemed to have a sort of veneration. It was a large doll dressed in an old-fashioned robe of worn-out silk. The years had made it almost bald; its nose was broken, its hands and face were chipped, the enamel was all off and I recall that it had only one shoe, an old shoe of morocco leather, all cracked, with a buckle of blackened silver and a high heel which had once been red.''. Limited. Decorative-Paper boards. Fine. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall.