Doruntine

In a medieval Albanian town, two women, mother and daughter, are on their deathbed. Three years have passed since Doruntine married a foreigner and went off with him to his home far to the west in Bohemia. During those years there had been no communication with her. War broke out, and of her nine brothers, some died in battle, some of plague caught from the enemy soldiers. All were dead. And last night Doruntine came home. Captain Stres, head of the constabulary of the region makes these remarks in his official report: From within, the old lady asked who was there, and then the few words exchanged by the daughter and her mother-the former saying that it was she, and she had come with Constantine, and the other replying that Constantine was three years dead-gave both of them the shock that felled them. I thought it necessary to make a report about these events because they concern one of the noblest families of the principality, and because they are of a kind that might seriously trouble people's minds. They do indeed trouble people's minds. The archbishop of the principality has to take account of the heresy, spread everywhere, that Constantine has risen from the dead. And Captain Stres, the policeman and bureaucrat, in pursuing his inquiry into Doruntine's return, suffers a sea change that makes him too the stuff of legend.