Agnes Sorel: A Novel

How strange the sensation would be, how marvelously interesting the scene, were we to wake up from some quiet night's rest and find ourselves suddenly transported four or five h...

There was a small, square room, of a very plain, unostentatious appearance, in the turret of a tall house in the city of Paris. The walls were of hewn stone, without any decorat...

Passing through a small and narrow hall, Jacques C[oe]ur and his companion ascended a flight of six or seven steps, and then entered, by a door larger than that which communicat...

For a moment after the Duke of Orleans had quitted the hall, Jacques C[oe]ur and his young companion stood looking at each other in silence; for the agitation which the prince h...

To retrace one's steps is always difficult; and it may be as well, whenever the urgency of action will permit it, in life, as in a tale that is told, to pause a little upon the...

Hope is nothing but a bit of cork floating on the sea of life, now tossed up into the sky, now sunk down into the abyss, but rising, rising again over the crest of the foamy wav...

"This is beautiful writing," said the Duke of Orleans, laying one hand upon Jean Charost's shoulder, and leaning over him as he added the few last words to a proposal of accommo...

Great silence pervaded the palace of the Duke of Orleans, or, at least, that part of it in which Jean Charost's rooms were situated, during the rest of the day. He thought he he...

Long before the hour appointed for him to wait upon the duke, Jean Charost was up and dressed, expecting every moment to see the servant he had engaged present himself, but no M...

At the corner of a street, on the island which formed the first nucleus round which gathered the great city of Paris, was a small booth, protruding from a little, ill-favored ho...

I know few things more pleasant than a stroll through Paris, as I remember it, in a fine early winter's morning. There was an originality about the people whom one saw out and a...

There are periods in the life of every man daring which accidents, misadventures, annoyances even, if they be not of too great magnitude, are of service to him. When, from withi...

The cool twilight of a fine winter's evening filled the air as the train of the Duke of Orleans approached his château of Beauté. Standing on a high bank, with the river flowing...

Many, eager, and loud were the inquiries of the party who came to the rescue of Jean Charost, regarding his adventures since Martin had left him; but their curiosity was left un...

No season is without its beauty, no scene without its peculiar interest. If the great mountain, with its stony peak shooting up into the sky, has sublimity of one kind, the wide...

Two servants, one an elderly, grave, and silent personage, with the air of knowing much and saying little, which is the proper characteristic of experienced serving-men; the oth...

Human weaknesses and human follies, human vices and human crimes, are undoubtedly very excellent and beneficial things. It may seem paradoxical to say that the fact of one man c...

Martin Grille looked at Armand Chauvin, and Armand Chauvin at Martin Grille, but neither spoke; for Armand was by nature somewhat taciturn, and the other, though he did not vent...

The curiosity of Martin Grille was greatly excited. The curiosity of Martin Grille could not rest. He had no idea of a master having a secret from a valet. What were valets made...

When within a few miles of the château of Beauté, Armand Chauvin was sent forward to announce the near approach of the duchess; and she herself, though the weather was still int...

In the court-yard of the château of Beauté--a long, but somewhat narrow parallelogram--were assembled most of the male members of the Duke of Orleans's household, two days after...

All great events are made up of small incidents. The world is composed of atoms, and so is Fate. A man pulling a small bit of iron under a gun performs an act, abstractedly of n...

Standing in the street, at the door of the house to which he had been directed, Jean Charost found a common-looking man, whose rank or station was hardly to be divined by his dr...

There was in Paris an old irregular street, called the Street of the Old Temple, which had been built out toward the Porte Barbette at a period when the capital of France was mu...

The gates of the Hôtel Barbette--formerly the Hôtel Montaigne--opened instantly to the Duke of Orleans, and he was kept but a moment in the great hall ere the queen gave an orde...

We must now once more follow the course of Jean Charost. It has been said that when the gates of the house of Madame De Giac (by a contrivance very common at that time in Paris...

Do you recollect visiting the booth of a cutler? In that very booth, the day after the arrest of Jean Charost, might be seen the intelligent countenance of the deformed boy, Pet...

There was a great crowd in the court of the Hôtel d'Anjou--lackeys, and pages, and men-at-arms; but the court was a very large one, with covered galleries on either hand, and th...

There are moments in life when even kindness and tenderness have no balm--when all streams are bitter because the bitterness is in us--when the heart is hardened to the nether m...

A week, a fortnight, a month; what are they in the long, long, boundless lapse of time? A point--a mere point on which the eye of memory hardly rests in the look-back of a lifet...

It was past ten o'clock at night, when a litter, escorted by four men on horseback, passed the gates of Paris. A short detention took place before the guards at the gates would...

The power of the Duke of Burgundy was without bounds in the city of Paris, and his daring and his ferocity were as boundless. He remembered ancient offenses as tenaciously as th...

A few miles from the strong town of Bourges, on the summit of a considerable elevation, was a château or castle, even then showing some signs of antiquity. It was not a very lar...

A few brief glimpses, if you please, dear reader--quiet, and calm, and cool, like the early sunshine of a clear autumn day--a few brief glimpses, to throw some light upon a laps...

Towns have their varying expressions as well as human faces; and the aspect of Monterreau, on the tenth of September, one thousand four hundred and nineteen, presented a curious...

When Jean Charost reached the bottom of the great stair-case, he found every thing below in a state of great hurry and confusion. A number of persons were passing out, and state...

To dwell minutely upon a period unfilled by action, and merely marked by the revolution of day and night, even in the life of a person in whom we have some interest, would be al...

Sometimes very small and insignificant occurrences, even when anticipated and prepared for, produce mighty and unforeseen consequences; sometimes great and startling events the...

Who has not heard of the beautiful Allier? Who has not heard of the magnificent Auvergne? But the horseman stopped not to gaze at the mountains round him. He lingered not upon t...

How the news spread through the castle, I know not; but Charles VII. had hardly recovered from the first surprise of the intelligence when, without waiting for permission or cer...

What a wild whirlpool is history, and how strange it is to gaze upon it, and to see the multitudes of atoms that every instant are rushing forward upon the whirling and struggli...

When Jean Charost awoke, it was one of those pleasant, drowsy summer mornings when the whole of nature seems still inclined to sleep, when there is a softness in the air, a mist...

There was a great change in Agnes, and Madame De Brecy remarked it immediately. Hers was an earnest, though a cheerful spirit, and when she was thoughtful, those who knew her we...

The power of the mind to accommodate itself to all things is curiously displayed in the zest and carelessness with which soldiers, in the busy time of war, enjoy all short inter...

This is not a book of battles and sieges--those fire-works of history which explode with a brief space of brilliant light, and leave nothing but dust, and tinder, and darkness....

The town and the castle were quiet; the hateful sound of the rattling cannon was heard no more; _pierrier_, _veuglaire_,[4] and culverin were still, and the drum and the trumpet...

Just behind the old stone cross on the green of the little village of St. Privé, about half a mile south of Pressavoix, a large pavilion was erected, not far from the bank of th...

Many are the perils of greatness, but among them all, there are few more disastrous than that of being subject continually to influences the most corrupt, which poison the strea...

For Jean Charost, a period of lethargy--I may almost call it--succeeded the scene last described. A dull, idle, heavy dream--a torpor of the spirit as well as of the body. It is...

Flitting like shadows in a mist, came many a great event in the history of France about that time, hardly known or appreciated by any except those who were the immediate actors...

De Brecy woke with a start just in the gray of the dawn. His thoughts were confused. He had had troublous dreams. He had fancied himself in the midst of war and strife again, an...

It gives one a curious sensation to stand on the spot where great deeds have been enacted: to tread the halls where true tragedies have been performed: to fancy one sees the blo...

A little after ten o'clock at night, a party of some five-and-twenty persons, escorting one of the large horse-litters of the day, stopped in the court-yard of the old Castle of...