Cerise: A Tale of the Last Century

At a distance of less than a league from Port Welcome stood the large and flourishing plantation of _Cash-a-crou_, known to the European population, and, indeed, to many of the...

Of all passions that tear and worry at the human heart, jealousy seems to be not only the most painful but the most contradictory. Anger, desire, avarice, revenge, all these pro...

That night much noise and confusion reigned outside the Grand Opera House. Torches flared, linkmen shouted, horses plunged, backed, and clattered; oaths flew here and there, whi...

Like many old country places of the time, Hamilton Hill had a village belonging to it, which seemed to have nestled itself into the valley under shelter of the great house, just...

“You shall not again have cause to complain of my negligence in writing, nor to accuse me of forgetting my own dear mother, amongst all the new employments and dissipations of m...

HE came in smiling, of course. When was the Abbé to be caught without his self-possessed smile, his easy manner, and his carefully-arranged dress? On the present occasion he car...

We left Sir George watching in the cold, under a clump of yews, for the chance of seeing his wife’s shadow cross one of the lighted windows in the gallery. He remained there far...

“What a sky! what weather! what a look-out! what an apartment, and what chocolate!” exclaimed Madame de Montmirail to her maid, in an accent of intense Parisian disgust; while t...

The threats Captain Bold had been so indiscreet as to utter afforded an explanation of much that had hitherto puzzled Alice in the habits and demeanour of her aunt’s guests. It...

“But, madame, I am as anxious as you can be! Independent of my own feelings—and judge if they be not strong—the brigantine should not lie here another hour. After last night’s w...

Year by year a certain stag had been growing fatter and fatter in the deep glades and quiet woodlands that surrounded Fontainebleau. He was but a pricket when Cerise made her da...

“It is good to be superior to mortal weakness,” said Malletort to himself as he re-entered his coach and drove from Bartoletti’s door. “In the human subject I cannot but observe...

In the year 1540, five Spaniards and a Savoyard, styling themselves “Clerks of the Company of Jesus,” left Paris under the leadership of the famous Ignatius Loyola, to found an...

‘The Bashful Maid’ was still lying peacefully at anchor in the harbour of Port Welcome, yards squared, sails furled, decks polished to a dazzling white, every article of gear an...

Since Horace wrote that musical ode in which he expresses a poet’s admiration pretty equally divided between mother and daughter, how many similes have been exhausted, how many...

When the door had closed on his wife, Sir George settled himself comfortably in his chair, filled a bumper from the claret jug, and, passing it to Florian, proposed the accustom...

“Do you suppose I came here to amuse myself?” asked Malletort, passing his arm under his companion’s so as to turn him round on the gravel walk within a yard of Alice’s hiding-p...

So the duel began. The moral battle that a man wages with his own temper, his own passions, words, actions, his very thoughts, and a few days of the uncongenial struggle seemed...

He ought to have known, he _did_ know, his danger. If he was not sure of it during his ride to the coast, while he crossed the Channel, and felt the wild spray dash against his...

As in a council of war, the youngest spoke first. “Mates!” said he, “here be three of us, all run for the same port, and never a one sported bunting. I ain’t a chap, I ain’t, as...

While the occupants of the parlour were sipping punch those of the tap-room had gone systematically through the different stages of inebriety—the friendly, the argumentative, th...

When Cerise found herself alone, she naturally read her mother’s letter once again, and made a variety of resolutions for her future conduct which she could not but acknowledge...

The path was steep and narrow, leading them, moreover, through the most tangled and inaccessible parts of the jungle. Their progress was necessarily tardy and laborious. Fleuret...

It was no wonder the Marquise de Montmirail, amid the hurry and excitement of a stag-hunt, failed to recognise the merry page who used to play with her child in that stalwart mu...

In less than an hour, how changed the scene for two of the actors in that mysterious drama—of which Bartoletti was chief manager and Malletort sat in the prompter’s box! The Cap...

Moments are precious at such a time. The negro, goaded by shame, rage, and alcohol, had drawn his breath for a spring, when a loud cheer was heard outside, followed by two or th...

The daisies we string in chains before ten, we tread under foot without compunction after twenty. Cerise, pacing a noble terrace rolled and levelled beneath the windows of her h...

Notwithstanding the excitement under which she laboured, and the emotion she painfully though contemptuously kept down, Madame de Montmirail could not but smile at the unpretend...

If Captain George kept a log, as is probable, or Eugène Beaudésir a diary, as is possible, I have no intention of copying it. In the history of individuals, as of nations, the e...

It was a refreshing sight to behold Slap-Jack, “rigged,” as he was pleased to term it, “to the nines,” in the extreme of sea-dandyism, enacting the favourite part of a “liberty-...

The death of the great king, and the first transactions of the Regency, left little leisure to Abbé Malletort for the thousand occupations of his every-day life. With the busy c...

Beaudésir, by the wretched light of two tallow-candles, looked paler, thinner, more dejected, than even that pale, thin, anxious recruit who had joined the Grey Musketeers with...

The crowd had passed on to witness the king’s dinner, now in full progress, and the two soberly-clad friends found themselves the only occupants of the gardens. Side by side the...

Malletort, leaving his cousin’s house by its principal egress, did not enter his coach at once, but whispering certain directions to the servants, proceeded leisurely down a nar...

In the meantime poor Célandine found herself hurried down the mountain by Hippolyte and his band, in a state of anxiety and alarm that would have paralysed the energies of most...

Three dirty children with blue eyes, fair locks, and round, chubby faces, deepened by a warm peach-like tint beneath the skin, such as are to be seen in plenty along our souther...

In obedience to his mistress, Bartoletti had endeavoured to secure the few weak fastenings of the house, but his hands shook so, that without Fleurette’s aid not a bolt would ha...

It was Sir Marmaduke’s maxim, as he boasted it had been his father’s and grandfather’s, to sleep on a resolution before putting it in practice. He secured, therefore, a good nig...

There was a tolerably snug parlour under the roof of the Fox and Fiddle, notwithstanding that its dimensions were small, its floor uneven, and its ceiling so low that a solitary...

There was plenty of room in the Hôtel Montmirail when it was opened at night for Madame’s distinguished receptions. Its screen of lights in front, its long rows of windows, shed...

It is needless to follow Madame de Montmirail and her new retainer through the different stages of their journey to the north. By dint of liberal pay, with some nautical eloquen...

Opening the door with a yawn, and stretching her arms like one lately roused from sleep, the Quadroon found herself face to face with the Coromantee, backed by nearly a score of...

It was pitch dark in the cabin, but although under a cloudy sky there was light enough to discern objects on deck or alongside. As Smoke-Jack observed, stealing aft with bare fe...

Of all armies on earth, there is none with a discipline so perfect as exists in the ranks of the Jesuits. No similar brotherhood embraces so extensive a scheme; no society sprea...

Ladies first. Let us identify the pretty little girl in the gardens of Versailles, who answered to the name of Cerise, before we account for the presence of George Hamilton the...

“Go ahead, Jack!” said the baronet, after they had crunched the frozen snow in silence for a quarter of a mile. “See that everything is ready, and secure a couple of berths in t...

Meanwhile Cerise, not the least sleepy, though sent prematurely to bed, dismissed her attendant protesting vehemently, and sat herself down also at an open window, to breathe th...

Captain George was not the only soldier of France whom a visit to the Hôtel Montmirail affected that morning with the slighter and premonitory symptoms of fever, such as dry mou...

In the gardens of Versailles, as everywhere else within the freezing influence of the _Grand Monarque_, nature herself seemed to accept the situation, and succumbed inevitably u...

A bugler, thirteen years of age, and about three feet high, a veritable “Child of the Regiment,” was blowing “The Assembly” for the Grey Musketeers with a vigour that made itsel...

For the courtiers of _Louis le Grand_ there was no such thing as hunger or thirst, want of appetite, heat, cold, lassitude, depression, or fatigue. If he chose they should accom...

“There is nothing but the Declaration to be provided for now,” observed Malletort, after a pause. “You had better give it me back, Florian, even without Sir George’s name subscr...

Malletort had long ago expressed an opinion on the despotism of King Chiffon, but he little expected to be thwarted by that monarch in dealing with one of his most devoted subje...

But Slap-Jack was not asleep; far from it. His narrow hiding-place offered but little temptation to repose, and almost the first sentence uttered by Hippolyte aroused the suspic...

The Marquise scarcely heard him. She was intent on those two figures scrambling up the opposite shore, and fast disappearing into the darkness beyond. It seemed that the darknes...

I have mentioned that Slap-Jack, too, while he rode perforce so rapidly homewards, was pursued by a black Care of his own, waiting for a momentary halt to leap up behind. Even w...

The Black Musketeers on duty cleared a lane for the Regent at the door, and the lower orders, with whom, despite his bad character, a certain joviality of manner made him no sma...

Though it was towards the small hours of morning that the coach arrived, with its dead freight, at the gates of Hamilton Hill, the whole establishment seemed to arouse itself on...

At eight bells the Captain came on deck again, glancing once more somewhat anxiously astern. Not a cloud was to be seen in the moonlit sky, and the breeze that had blown so stea...

Transplanted, like some delicate flower from her native soil, to this glowing West Indian Island, Mademoiselle de Montmirail had lost but little of the freshness that bloomed in...