Gustave Flaubert 
Three Short Works [PDF ebook] 
The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul

The three works in this book are each strikingly different. Death, Satan and Nero (the fifth Roman emperor) converse in a prose poem; a Medieval saint encounters trial and struggle before attaining divinity; the life of a selfless maid in 19th-century France shows the horror of true altruism.