Asbeïn

At the Trevi Fountain, Princess Natalie runs after Boris Lensky—and the celebrated violinist is so lost in thought he hardly notices her. Their reunion turns on a coin tossed into the water and a promise neither seems sure to trust.

Rome in the 1850s is all bright fountains, church bells and chilly March sunlight when Natalie asks Lensky, a famous musician of humble and uncertain origins, to play for her. He answers with wounded pride, suspicious that she has lost interest in his music; she meets his sharpness with laughter, until the arrival of a fashionable rival changes the air between them. Lensky may command the concert hall, but he envies the ease of a man born to the society he can never quite enter. He promises to return in two weeks—but what will he find when he does?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.