Reading should be our constant companion. Because of my field, I read only the works of Hazrat Alisher Navoi.

Reading should be our constant companion. Because of my field, I read only the works of Hazrat Alisher Navoi.

But I have begun to find time to leaf through some of the books I read in my childhood, adolescence and student years.

On the road, at mealtimes and so on. But every day I read, even if it is only half a page.

One such book was the French writer Prosper Mérimée's "Chronicle of the Reign of Charles IX". It was printed in Tashkent in 1986 by the Gafur Gulom Publishing House of Literature and Art.

Given my time, this time I will write briefly about the novella "Mateo Falcone" in the book.

A ten-year-old son betrays, in exchange for a watch, a criminal who sought refuge in his home. And the father shoots him dead for this betrayal.

That is the story in brief.

For me this story gave a picture of how the people who lived before the new age — the 19th century — wherever on earth they lived, did not tolerate cunning, deceit and treachery, and held firmly to courage and loyalty and to strict traditions.

In general, much can be said about the novella. In short, this story is a tragedy about the destruction of the ancestors' values. If the father is an allegory of the pure-hearted and strong, combative and invincible forefathers, the boy seems to record a portrait of generations that have become corrupted, frivolous and deceived by the world.

There is more to say separately about Prosper Mérimée's work. We will come to know the writer's stance, his approach to life and to creative work, through the analysis of further novellas.