Chantemerle

“ROXANE. Il faut que je revoie en vous le . . . presque frère, Avec qui je jouais, dans le parc—près du lac ! CYRANO. Oui, vous veniez tous les étés à Bergerac ! . . . ROXANE. C...

They were pacing slowly up and down the terrace at Chantemerle among the roses of the late June of 1792. The little river Lay, curled about the foot of the hill, and hugged by t...

Had the Marquise de Château-Foix been able to overhear the conversation between her son and M. des Graves she might perhaps have held her surmises to be in a measure justified....

“Ces hommes étaient doués d’une étrange souplesse vitale: pour eux l’apprentissage avait été nul, et la tache fut terrible. Au cours de la tempête révolutionnaire, ils firent pr...

Meanwhile the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay, finding his cousin still occupied, had drawn aside the window curtains and was looking out, or pretending to do so, with latent impatience....

It may be a truism, and therefore tiresome, that the night brings counsel, but of the instances of that truism the Marquis de Château-Foix was certainly one as he stood next mor...

“Je t’ai vue au temps des lilas, Ton jeune cœur venait d’éclore, Et tu disais, ‘Je ne veux pas, Je ne veux pas qu’on m’aime encore !’ Qu’as-tu fait depuis mon départ? Qui part t...

At a little table in the Café de Foy, once a Revolutionary, now a Royalist resort, the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay sat the next morning and waited for his cousin. The busy life of th...

“Peuple Français, peuple intrépide . . . Entends les cris, vois l’insolence Des muscadins, amis des rois ; Ils menacent de leur vengeance Tous les défenseurs de tes droits. . ....

“I tint half mysel’ when my gude lord I did tine: A heart half sae brave a braid belt will never bin’, Nor the grassy sods cover a bosom half sae kin’; He's a drop o' dearest bl...

A little pensive over lost glories, over periwig and falbala, over lovelock and Flanders point, there stood in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, in the once fashionable quarter of the...

“Puis une révolte surgit en lui contre lui-même, contre cette honteuse insinuation du moi défiant, du moi jaloux, du moi méchant que nous portons tous. . . . On ne peut rien con...

“Roses, roses, roses scatter, Drifts of pink in the flooding water; Dial that notched our hours in the sun Hath no notch for the hours undone, Hours in the rain; and no great ma...

“And do you ask what game she plays? With me ’tis lost or won; With thee ’tis playing still; with him It is not well begun; But ’tis a game she plays with all Beneath the sway o...

The long day of suspense was closing into evening before Gilbert, consumed with anxiety at the Hôtel des Etats-Généraux, knew that Madame d’Espaze had not belied her word. From...

“If we must part, Then let it be like this; Not heart on heart, Nor with the useless anguish of a kiss; But touch my hand and say: ‘Until to-morrow or some other day, If we must...

When Gilbert stood a moment in the street watching the fiacre bearing Louis rapidly away from him, his first feeling was one of violent and unrestrained anger against the impuls...

When the light, two-wheeled post-chaise, with its pair of horses and its postilion, was rolling at last along the sunlit quays, Gilbert forced himself to turn his thoughts from...

“If you be the Earl, as I think you be, Sit down and drink the red wine with me; But I rede ye, when ye shall rise from the board, Ye commend your soul to the saints, my lord!”

“I must not think of thee. . . . . . . . . . . . But when sleep comes to close the difficult day, When night gives pause to the long watch I keep, And all my bonds I needs must...

“How could you bear it? Would you not cry out, Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears That hear no more your voice you hear the same, God! what is left but hell for com...

“Ken ye wha supped Bessy’s haggies? Ken ye wha dinner’d on our Bessy’s haggies? Four good lords and three bonny ladies, A’ to dinner on our Bessy’s haggies. Ae gude chief wi’ hi...

As the sun set on Nuillé-sur-Vicoin a single horseman clattered into its main street, and, drawing rein before the Soleil d’Or, looked about him. Mr Harry Trenchard had been jou...

“O thou unfaithful, still as ever dearest, That in thy beauty to my eyes appearest, In fancy rising now to reawaken My love unshaken; All thou’st forgotten, but no change can fr...

“Où peut-on être mieux qu’au sein de sa famille ? Tout est content, le cœur, les yeux ; Vivons, amis, comme nos bons aieux. Les noms d’époux et de fille sont délicieux.” —Opera...

The Marquis, who had passed him and gone straight to a chair by the hearth, threw himself down in it as he replied, in a voice by no means remarkable for grateful feeling: “Oh,...

Gilbert slept late next morning. When he at last came downstairs he could not find the Marquise, and as he was looking for her he met the Curé emerging from the library. He gree...

The decades of shearing and rolling undergone by the bowling-green had rendered it of a fabulous smoothness. Yet the bowl which a cunning hand had launched with confident care t...

But Trenchard had a sudden vision of the spoilt child of fortune with his fettered arm and his set, smiling mouth as they jogged along the interminable road to Candé. “Still, do...

“Shall I not one day remember thy bower, One day when all days are one day to me! Thinking, ‘I stirred not and yet had the power!’ Yearning, ‘Ah God, if again it might be!’ Peac...

If Louis slept soundly during the remainder of that night M. des Graves did not. He went down slowly to the library, and sat there a long time by the dying fire, stunned. Louis...

“O merry was the lilting amang our ladies a’ They danc’d i’ the parlour, and sang in the ha’, . . . . . . . . But they canna dight their tears now, sae fast do they fa’.” —_Lame...

“He was first always. Fortune Shone bright in his face. I fought for years; with no effort He conquered the place. We ran: my feet were all bleeding, But he won the race.

“You let him try to give The story of our love and ignorance, And the brief madness and the long despair— You let him plead all this, because your code Of honour bids you hear b...

That the Marquis’ missive ever reached Le Fougerais was no small wonder, for his messenger rode thither like a madman. It happened that the priest met him in the hall when he re...

And while M. des Graves was saying to Louis de Chantemerle, on that Saturday morning, the 2nd of March, what he had it in his mind to say, there was travelling rapidly to Fonten...

“From child to youth; from youth to arduous man; From lethargy to fever of the heart; From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart; From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of...

“To the little red house by the river I came when the short night fell. I broke the web for ever, I broke my heart as well. Michael and the Saints deliver My soul from the nethe...

Once again M. des Graves sat in the library, and he sat in silence—save for a very cheerful and crackling fire. But he was not alone. By the side of his chair, an elbow on the a...

“On the road that goes northward the red foemen ride; On the road that goes west, hark, the sob of the tide! To the east a false comrade—to the southward . . . who knows? And hi...

At half an hour after noon next day Louis-Henri-François de Marcé, with forty-eight years of service and two thousand five hundred men behind him, marched out of Chantonnay in t...

Inside the little church it was beginning to grow dusk, and the May twilight, as if in pity, shrouded the devastation which had recently been wrought there. Chalbos’ soldiers ha...

“It strikes me very forcibly,” observed Louis in a low voice, “that we shall be occupied, all the time you are away taking Luçon, in tidying up the horrible litter you have made...

“We brought the holy water for his brow Who lies before the altar candles now. . . . . . . While overhead, with red wings interlaced, Above the bier of cedar newly sawn The towe...

“Mon fiancé dort sous la noire terre, Dans la froide tombe il rêve de nous, Laissez-moi pleurer, ma peine est amère, Laissez-moi gémir et veiller, ma mère! Les pleurs me sont do...

It was not yet dawn. In the darkness of the Bois des Amourettes (the name held a horrible irony), huddled together for warmth, wet to the skin with the frozen rain, worn out wit...

“Yea, I am passed away, I think, from this; Nor helps me herb, nor any leechcraft here, But lift me hither the sweet cross to kiss, And witness ye, I go without a fear.” —AUSTIN...

When the dawn broke Louis was still alive. It was all that could be said; yet when the cold daylight was fully come, and the priest could get a clearer view of his face, drowned...

The stream of the Latin, widening and sonorous, bathed all the dusty, comfortless loft with a suggestion of better and unchanging places, of choir or cloister, and washed in wav...

“My dearest Philip,—I am aware that I wrote fully to you yesterday, and you are not to think that you will get so long a letter every day. There is a reason for my increase of z...