After Dark

“Much obliged, my respectable old friend, for so interesting and unexpected a reply to my question. Considering that I am the valet of Monsieur Danville, who plays the distingui...

Inexorably the important morrow came: irretrievably, for good or for evil, the momentous marriage-vow was pronounced. Charles Danville and Rose Trudaine were now man and wife. T...

Five years have elapsed since Monsieur Lomaque stood thoughtfully at the gate of Trudaine’s house, looking after the carriage of the bride and bridegroom, and seriously reflecti...

Ignorant of the change in her husband’s plans, which was to bring him back to Paris a day before the time that had been fixed for his return, Sister Rose had left her solitary h...

The head jailer of St. Lazare stood in the outer hall of the prison, two days after the arrest at Trudaine’s lodgings, smoking his morning pipe. Looking toward the courtyard gat...

The waiting-room of the revolutionary tribunal was a grim, bare place, with a dirty stone floor, and benches running round the walls. The windows were high and barred; and at th...

The day wore on. By ones and twos and threes at a time, the condemned prisoners came from the tribunal, and collected in the waiting-room. At two o’clock all was ready for the c...

On a spring morning, in the year seventeen hundred and ninety-eight, the public conveyance then running between Chalons-sur-Marne and Paris sat down one of its outside passenger...

Two days after the traveling-carriage described by Lomaque had passed the diligence on the road to Paris, Madame Danville sat in the drawing-room of an apartment in the Rue de G...

Three more days have passed. It is evening. Rose, Trudaine and Lomaque are seated together on the bench that overlooks the windings of the Seine. The old familiar scene spreads...

One night, during the period of the first French Revolution, the family of Francois Sarzeau, a fisherman of Brittany, were all waking and watching at a late hour in their cottag...

The fisherman was dripping with wet; but his face, always pale and inflexible, seemed to be but little altered in expression by the perils through which he must have passed duri...

There are some parts of the world where it would be drawing no natural picture of human nature to represent a son as believing conscientiously that an offense against life and t...

While Gabriel still remained prostrated under the affliction that was wasting his energies of body and mind, Brittany was visited by a great public calamity, in which all privat...

Among other propositions which were then submitted to the Parliament, was one advocating the restoration of the road-side crosses throughout the province. It was found, however,...

About a century ago, there lived in the ancient city of Pisa a famous Italian milliner, who, by way of vindicating to all customers her familiarity with Paris fashions, adopted...

While the milliners of the Grifoni establishment were industriously shaping dresses, the sculptors in Luca Lomi’s workshop were, in their way, quite as hard at work shaping marb...

From the studio Father Rocco went straight to his own rooms, hard by the church to which he was attached. Opening a cabinet in his study, he took from one of its drawers a handf...

Even the master-stroke of replacing the treacherous Italian forewoman by a French dressmaker, engaged direct from Paris, did not at first avail to elevate the great Grifoni esta...

While the Marchesa Melani was making inquiries at the gate of the palace, Fabio was sitting alone in the apartment which his wife usually occupied when she was in health. It was...

Before the servant could get to the priest’s lodgings a visitor had applied there for admission, and had been immediately received by Father Rocco himself. This favored guest wa...

About eight months after the Countess d’Ascoli had been laid in her grave in the Campo Santo, two reports were circulated through the gay world of Pisa, which excited curiosity...

The death of Maddalena d’Ascoli produced a complete change in the lives of her father and her uncle. After the first shock of the bereavement was over, Luca Lomi declared that i...

The next night, at the time of assembling specified in the invitations to the masked ball, Fabio was still lingering in his palace, and still allowing the black domino to lie un...

Signor Andrea D’Arbino, searching vainly through the various rooms in the palace for Count Fabio d’Ascoli, and trying as a last resource, the corridor leading to the ballroom an...

Of all the persons who had been present, in any capacity, at the Marquis Melani’s ball, the earliest riser on the morning after it was Nanina. The agitation produced by the stra...

The next morning, when Nanina rose, a bad attack of headache, and a sense of languor and depression, reminded her of the necessity of following the doctor’s advice, and preservi...

The next morning, among the first visitors at the Ascoli Palace was the master-sculptor, Luca Lomi. He seemed, as the servants thought, agitated, and said he was especially desi...

About six months after the events already related, Signor Andrea D’Arbino and the Cavaliere Finello happened to be staying with a friend, in a seaside villa on the Castellamare...