'Then he saw the barrel of a gun aimed dead on target - not at him, as he might have expected, but at the clergyman's back.'

Set in a crumbling Spanish mansion, this gloriously comic and gothic novel follows the fortunes of an innocent young priest as he enters a world of moral decadence, sexual intrigue and corruption.

A new series of twenty distinctive, unforgettable Penguin Classics in a beautiful new design and pocket-sized format, with coloured jackets echoing Penguin's original covers.

Set in a crumbling Spanish mansion, this 1886 novel follows innocent and timid Father Julian Alvarez as he tries to turn his aristocratic employer away from drinking, womanising and emptying the last of the family coffers.