A rogue's tragedy

Two figments of that endless sweet obsession stood alone--high on a slope of Alp this time. Born of a dream to flesh, they thought they owed themselves to flesh--a sacred debt....

On the day when Augias, Conte di Rocco, was raised to the Marquisate and made a member of the Government of Victor-Amadeus III., titular King of Sardinia and Duke of Savoy and P...

The Château di Rocco stood well back, among pine woods, from the little village of Les Chables on the Argentière Road. Above it sloped the stony steeps of the Flegère; below wer...

M. Louis-Marie Saint-Peray lodged in the house of a M. Paccard, Le Prieuré’s respectable doctor, and an enthusiast in matters of geology. Everyone loved Louis-Marie, even, in a...

Yolande de France walked straight down the hill to her doom. She had no Spanish silk umbrella, like Cartouche’s, to shield her head from the tempest, nor any strength, like his,...

There was a little _auberge_ on the Montverd, kept open during the summer months for the benefit of those (not many in 1783) who came to enjoy the view. There, in a green oasis,...

If all the rest of feminine Le Prieuré was agreed in accepting Louis-Marie’s discomfiture with regretful resignation, Martha Paccard was certainly not going to number herself of...

There was a night of hurried storm long remembered in Le Prieuré. All during it the wind drove up in squalls, like the thunder of passing artillery, unlimbered over the mountain...

Turin, wedged into a corner between the Po and Dora, with all its ranks of lines and squares criss-crossing the angle like the meshes of a snow-shoe, was a depressing city to be...

“Under the Porticoes,” in the thronged fashionable heart of Turin, two men met by appointment before the city was well awake. Their encounter was sharp, to the point, and made n...

There was a jumble of old streets and buildings in Turin, flourishing out of sight behind the Palazzo Reale--like a scrap of wild thicket overlooked in the reclamation of a wast...

And Yolande of the white hands! How was it faring with her, the lily gathered to perfume a Saturnalia, the victim of as heartless a casuistry as ever committed a clean virgin to...

The Royal Palace of Turin, situated off the Piazza Castello, in the east, or distinguished quarter of the city, epitomised in itself the policy of the Savoyard rule. Externally...

Within a stone’s throw of the royal Palace, under its usurious eye, as it were, stood the Palazzo di Citta, the headquarters of the Banco del Regio Lotto. There, every alternate...

The Prefect of Faissigny, commanded, for the second time within a week, and with a flattering grace of intimacy, into the King’s presence, discovered an exquisite butterfly wher...

Louis-Marie was really ill, though his complaint, it seemed, baffled diagnosis. He was sunk in an extreme debility, which from a moral had become a physical one. There appeared...

“I knew--as you all know now--what he intended, and where he was going. I had been informed secretly, and I set out to waylay him. Coming to the point from which he was to cross...

Dr Bonito sat isolated at a little table in the self-same _Café_ where he and Louis-Marie had once before consorted. The table stood well in the middle of the room, and under an...

Molly Bramble was, and had always been, within the pale of her social limitations, a perfectly good girl, sweet, modest and wholesome. Child of a class rather prone, in its mate...

If the Chevalier de France was destined a second time to suffer humiliation through his daughter’s perversity, that daughter herself was spared the social ostracism which would...

Cartouche, released, at the end of a week, from his inaugural business in the Le Prieuré Prefecture, returned forthwith to Turin--and to the re-encountering a problem, whose dif...

We mortals discuss the world as a subject of our common understanding, and no two of us see it with the same eyes. To Victor-Amadeus the third’s, for example, it was a stage for...

She had seen something of this man before; had heard--to loathe--more of him than she had seen. He was not one to be forgotten, once encountered--least of all by gentle souls. O...

On a flat open width of the Argentière road, a mile or so to the north-east of Le Prieuré, a little company of astronomers was gathered to gaze at the moon. They carried glasses...

That rod, nevertheless, was not to come out of pickle for some six years yet. And, in the meanwhile, Cartouche remained Prefect of Faissigny. For one thing, King’s favourites ar...

At the lower end of the Via del Po, where it debouched upon the river, stood, nicked out of the north side of the street, a little Square of houses known as the Court of Doctors...

He had done this thing for her--had stained his hands with blood to keep hers clean--had darkened his own soul that her soul might shine the purer for that shadow. What was her...

He noticed, with dark ruth, how wan her face had grown, how sharpened from its blunt youthful curves, how prematurely aged even--like a late-blown lily, shrunk, in its first lov...

That sunny forenoon on which Dr Bonito (carrying the King’s Commission in his pocket, and M. Léotade, whom he had taken up by the way, on the seat of the chaise beside him) came...

“They had exchanged tokens. He had parted with this knife to your husband. It is the damning link, to which I’ll swear. The Court is my Court, and my testimony will be final. I...

The trial of Mr Trix, ex-Prefect of Faissigny, for the murder of his patron, made a tremendous stir, not only locally, but throughout the Cisalpine Kingdom of Victor-Amadeus. It...

So, the end was near at last! And here, high up among the flying winds and shadows, like old Stylites on his pillar, he stood poised to take his flight. Not self-glorified like...

Even so--taken by surprise, his wits momentarily confounded--habitual wariness kept him stone-still where he lay, his head dropped back upon the forge, while he strove desperate...