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The novella that was the basis for perhaps the most popular opera of all time, Prosper M�rim�e�s Carmen is the swashbuckling story of a nineteenth-century Spanish soldier who deserts his post to pursue the fiery gypsy beauty, Carmen�who is as brave as she is fickle. The opera�s plot, it turns out, is based only on part of the larger adventure that is Carmen. The story opens, for example, with the narrator, a historian like M�rim�e, researching the lost site of an ancient Roman battle on the plains of Andalusia, when he meets a notorious bandit, Don Jos� Navarro, on the run from the law. Feeling a certain sympathy for Don Jos�, whose face is �at once noble and fierce,� and a vicarious thrill at this brush with danger, he helps the bandit to escape. When they next meet again, Don Jos� is in jail in Cordova, due to be hanged for his crimes. In his last days, he tells the narrator about a wild gypsy woman he met back in Seville . . . What follows is an iconic and highly entertaining tale of doomed passion full of chases, sword fights, bullfights, smuggling, wild dancing, and more�except no mezzo-sopranos. From the Trade Paperback edition.