These three stories, the last of Yourcenar's fiction to be translated into English, were written between 1927 and 1930 when the author was in her mid-twenties. "A Blue Tale" is a sensual, fantastic attempt to describe reality in tones of blue. Drawing on an ancient oral tradition, Yourcenar offers a tale of the credulity of men who are lured by riches - in this case, sapphires. "The First Evening" was originally written, though left unfinished, by Yourcenar's father, Michel de Crayencour. He exerted a strong influence on his daughter's life and on the early stages of her writing career. Yourcenar revised and completed this tale depicting a jaded French intellectual and man-of-the-world whose wedding night is disrupted by shocking news, and it was published under her name after her father's death.