The Demoiselle D'Ys

by Robert W. Chambers

The utter desolation of the scene began to have its effect; I sat down to face the situation and, if possible, recall to mind some landmark which might aid me in extricating myself from my present position. If I could only find the ocean again all would be clear, for I knew one could see the island of Groix from the cliffs. I laid down my gun, and kneeling behind a rock lighted a pipe. Then I looked at my watch. It was nearly four o'clock. I might have wandered far from Kerselec since daybreak.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Gothic

30 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1895

About the author

Robert William Chambers was an American artist and writer.

Chambers was first educated at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute,and then entered the Art Students' League at around the age of twenty, where the artist Charles Dana Gibson was his fellow student. Chambers studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, and at Académie Julian, in Paris from 1886 to 1893, and his work was displayed at the Salon as early as 1889. On his return to New York, he succeeded in selling his illustrations to Life, Truth, and Vogue magazines. Then, for reasons unclear, he devoted his time to writing, producing his first novel, In the Quarter (written in 1887 in Munich). His most famous, and perhaps most meritorious, effort is The King in Yellow, a collection of weird short stories, connected by the theme of the fictitious drama The King in Yellow, which drives those who read it insane.

Chambers returned to the weird genre in his later short story collections The Maker of Moons and The Tree of Heaven, but neither earned him such success as The King in Yellow.

Chambers later turned to writing romantic fiction to earn a living. According to some estimates, Chambers was one of the most successful literary careers of his period, his later novels selling well and a handful achieving best-seller status. Many of his works were also serialized in magazines.

After 1924 he devoted himself solely to writing historical fiction.

Chambers for several years made Broadalbin his summer home. Some of his novels touch upon colonial life in Broadalbin and Johnstown.

On July 12, 1898, he married Elsa Vaughn Moller (1882-1939). They had a son, Robert Edward Stuart Chambers (later calling himself Robert Husted Chambers) who also gained some fame as an author.

Chambers died at his home in the village of Broadalbin, New York, on December 16th 1933.

Reviews

[Althea Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hunter, lost on the moors, encounters a strangely old-fashioned young woman out hunting with her falcon, who offers him shelter at her manor. Is she just a lonely and isolated girl or is something stranger at play?

A beautifully eerie and romantic horror tale.

[Per · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://archive.org/details/WeirdTale...
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8492/...

Weird Tales reprint of a short story from the collection The King in Yellow [...] first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kin...

It starts off with two quotes, the latter from Proverbs 30:18-19...

There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not:
The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.

...and the former from Gargantua and Pantagruel, by Francois Rabelais...

Mais je croy que je
Suis descendu on puiz
Ténébreux onquel disoit
Heraclytus estre Vereté cachée.

...which is old/medieval French. The Gutenberg translation(*) by Peter Anthony Motteux and Thomas Urquhart has it down as...

I do not think but that I am let down into that dark pit in the lowermost bottom whereof the truth was hid, according to the saying of Heraclitus.

(*) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1200/...

The place, d'Ys, also spelled Is or Kêr-Is in Breton, and Ville d'Ys in French, is a mythical city on the coast of Brittany but later swallowed by the ocean.

Different versions of the legend share several basic common elements. King Gradlon (Gralon in Breton) ruled in Ys, a city built on land reclaimed from the sea, sometimes described as rich in commerce and the arts, with Gradlon's palace being made of marble, cedar and gold. In some versions, Gradlon built the city upon the request of his daughter Dahut, who loved the sea. To protect Ys from inundation, a dike was built with a gate that was opened for ships during low tide. The one key that opened the gate was held by the king.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ys

The Demoiselle sings a few lines of a song...

Chasseur, chasseur, chassez encore,
Quittez Rosette et Jeanneton,
Tonton, tonton, tontaine, tonton,
Ou, pour, rabattre, dès l'aurore,
Que les Amours soient de planton,
Tonton, tontaine, tonton.

...which comes from La Chasse(**) by Pierre-Jean de Béranger.

(**) https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/%C5%92...

[Olivia Case · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pacing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Style: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Setting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Character: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Theme: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Netanella · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this short story, the fifth in The King in Yellow collection of stories about a book that drives its readers mad. This story is love story, a poignant tale of medieval love and loss, with falconry, a French maiden, and a young American hunter lost on the moors. The star-crossed young lovers meet, fall in love, and are parted by a snake's bite, in true Orphic style.

This was sweet and melancholy, and I'm not quite sure how it fits into the great context of "The King in Yellow."

[Chris Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phillip loses his way in the Moore only to be saved by a young woman, who then takes him to her home and feeds him. The next day while exploring together a viper attacks.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this, the themes are interesting but it's a little too ambiguous with respect to the ending.

[Jonathan Nolan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert W. Chambers was a fascinating man and an equally fascinating author. From his past as a decadent artist to his eventual stolidity of a successful author in the Gilded Age, his artful concealment of detail makes his prose engaging and elevates it beyond the sometimes extremely simple premises in which he trades.
The Demoiselle D'Ys is in fact the prototype of a whole genre to which we are all well accustomed today, that of the ghostly lost love and the time-lost lovers.
What many may not perhaps know is that when the time came for him to recline from his efforts in his New York estate he did so on a property...
...To which he gave the name "Ys."

[Costin Manda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Described as "a time travel love story", this short story delivers absolutely nothing else. There is a guy, a girl, they fall in love in the most artificial and hard to believe way, then *twist*: it was some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey thing. The characters are at best cardboard, the story stale, the interaction between man and woman puerile.

Probably it read better in 1895, but damn it's boring now.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I classic horror story about ghostly love.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5⭐

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alright, not mind blowing.

[John Turturro · Rating 4 out of 5]

A predictable story for today's standards, but the way Chambers write it is so bewitching...

[Stefany Sánchez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Con esto compruebo que me gusta mucho lo que inventa el autor, pero odio sus finales, más que hacerme decir wow, me hacen decir wtf ksjsks
sigue siendo interesante

[Tony Ciak · Rating 5 out of 5]

great story by great author.

[Hugo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, c'est tellement efficace, dans le style romantique, avec si peu de pages, je suis agréablement surpris.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

a pretty average time traveling story

[Saski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Predictable, though perhaps not when it was written, over a century ago. But apart from the story, what I loved was the old French falconry terms. So glad they were defined later in the text.

A lovely tale, sweet, even.

[Alvaro_atm92 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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