melancholy, and resonates with empathy with people's suffering, regardless of whether they are saints or sinners, innocent or conflicted. However, feels nothing but contempt for the wealthy, landowners, minor aristocracy and others who "live off of the blood of the common people". His only saint, in fact, is a poor shepherd who, having warned the islanders, is slaughtered by Saracen pirates after he refuses to abandon his flock for the safety of the fortified town. This particular story, The Poor Saint, is the closest he comes to a truly religious theme. An example of Papadiamantis' deep and even-handed feeling for humanity is his acknowledged masterpiece, the novella The Murderess. It is the story of an old woman in Skiathos, who pities families with many daughters: given their low socioeconomic status, girls could not work before marriage and they could not marry unless they provide a dowry; therefore, they were a burden and a plight to their families. After killing her own newborn granddaughter, gravelly ill with pertussis, she crosses the line from pity to what she believes is useful and appropriate action, the "mercy killing" of young girls. She kills three young girls in succession by throwing them into wells and then pretending to be trying to save them in order to justify her presence there. As coincidences keep piling up, she is confronted with a stark fact: her assumption that she was helping was monstrously wrong, and she gradually slips into mad torment. She flees arrest and tries to hide in the wilderness, but drowns in the sea while trying to escape two policemen on her trail; as Papadiamantis puts it, she meets "death half-way between divine and human justice". The character of the murderess is depicted with deep empathy and without condemnation. "As a child, she served her parents. Once married, she was her husband's slave... when she had children, she served them, and when they had children, she became their slave". Even her name tells the story of women in 19th century rural Greece: her birth name, Hadoula, "tenderling", is all but forgotten; she now is the "Fragkoyannoú", i.e. the widow of Yannis Fragkos, her whole existence referenced only to the name of her late, good-for-nothing husband. His work is seminal in Modern Greek literature: he is for Greek prose what Dionysios Solomos is for poetry. As Odysseas Elytis wrote: "commemorate Dionysios Solomos, commemorate Alexander Papadiamantis". It