L'homme à l'Hispano : roman by Pierre Frondaie
"L’homme à l’Hispano" by Pierre Frondaie is a novel written in the early 20th century. It follows Georges Dewalter, a decorated but penniless veteran momentarily taken for a magnate thanks to a borrowed Hispano-Suiza, and Stéphane Coulevaï, a luminous heiress wed to the cynical English baronet Sir William Meredith Oswill. Set on the Basque coast around Biarritz and Saint-Jean-de-Luz, it explores a sudden, fated love entangled with class, illusion, and danger under
the glare of modern luxury. The opening of the novel plunges into the shimmer of an ivory Hispano crossing the Landes before delivering Dewalter and his acquaintance Deléone to Biarritz. In a Saint-Jean-de-Luz tearoom, the watchful miss Redge witnesses the wordless spark between Dewalter—misperceived as “the man with the Hispano”—and Stéphane, last of the wealthy Coulevaï line and the unhappily married lady Oswill. A portrait of Sir William unfolds: a rich, eccentric hunter-scientist who mocks love and relishes cruel “experiments.” He chances upon Dewalter, who reveals a delayed departure for Senegal, a borrowed car meant to hide Deléone’s liaison, his own poverty, and his growing love for Stéphane. After Dewalter’s poignant backstory of orphanhood, war, and failure, Stéphane quietly promises a day alone with him; that night she refuses her husband’s sudden plan to depart for Morocco, declaring her faith in love. The scene shifts to the glittering crowd at the Réserve in Ciboure, where, as the party thins and the bay turns lunar, Dewalter and Stéphane are left in an intimate hush, their resolve deepening as he takes her hands. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide
| Reading Options | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78101.html.images | 413 kB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78101.epub3.images | 315 kB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78101.epub.images | 315 kB | |||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78101.epub.noimages | 278 kB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78101.kf8.images | 492 kB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78101.kindle.images | 461 kB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78101.txt.utf-8 | 383 kB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/78101/pg78101-h.zip | 236 kB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
Similar Books
About this eBook
| Author | Frondaie, Pierre, 1884-1948 |
|---|---|
| Title | L'homme à l'Hispano : roman |
| Original Publication | Paris :Éditions Émile-Paul frères, 1925. |
| Credits | Laurent Vogel (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica)) |
| Language | French |
| LoC Class | PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese |
| Subject | French fiction -- 20th century |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78101 |
| Release Date | Mar 3, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 5031 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |