Plot Summary
The story begins when a shoemaker begins to open up his shop at daybreak. He notices that a large group of nomads from the north have filled the town square. The nomads show no signs of culture, and soon trash the city into "a veritable sty". They also show no respect for the town people and take everything they want from the stores without making any sort of payment. The Emperor appears at one of the palace windows and looks on as nomads take control of the city—but he's not able to do anything.
Read more about this topic: An Old Manuscript
Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:
“Jamess great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofnessthat is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually taken placeMthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, gone on.”
—James Thurber (18941961)
“Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists.”
—Walter Pater (18391894)