'Gloria Victis!' A Romance

To them it was due that Fritz had married a second-rate actress; that Fritz, under all the most distressing circumstances, had still suffered from homesickness, and had taken re...

It was over,--over and gone,--sentence had been pronounced,--her child's life was destroyed. This she repeated to herself again and again, without any clear comprehension of the...

Zoe Melkweyser was an Austrian and a distant relative of Truyn's. Very well-born, but in very narrow pecuniary circumstances, she had grown up on her widowed father's heavily-mo...

"Our poor Count Fritz is going fast," said old Doctor Swoboda every time that he returned from Schneeburg to Rautschin and stopped at the inn to drink a glass of beer; this time...

Rautschin, still Rautschin!--the tiny town lying at the feet of the huge castle on the tower of which the clock has stopped for twenty years--but no longer in pouring rain with...

It is really melancholy for people who have been accustomed in Paris to entertain crowned heads, to be obliged in Austria to put up with a few sickly sprigs of nobility.

Oswald and his cousin Georges were sitting at breakfast in their pleasant room in the Hotel Bristol by a window that looked out upon the Place Vendome, and down the brilliant Ru...

With regard to Oswald--the "Ossi" of whom Truyn made mention a while before.--Gabrielle was convinced that no sculptured classic god, none of Raphael's cherubim could compare wi...

"There is no help for it, I must do it to-day," the Baroness Melkweyser murmured with a sigh breathed into the depths of the toilet-glass, before which, she was sitting while he...

The next morning Fritz received a letter from his father enclosing a draft for a thousand-gulden note, coupled with the old Count's cordial and anxious words. His son's last let...

Picture a sleepy little market-town lying, at a respectful distance, near a very large castle, where the clock in the tower has not gone for twenty years; a ruggedly uneven mark...

A jingling of bells, a clatter of hoofs from five spirited bays harnessed in Russian fashion, and hardly seeming to touch the earth as they fly along, a rattle of wheels, a whir...

The fierce heat of the day is over, the rays of the westering sun cast mildly gleaming bands of gold here and there amid the pleasing confusion of furniture in the drawing-room,...

Three times Pistasch made this impertinent little remark as he gazed about him in 'The Temple of National Art.' It was a temporary temple, neither unsuitable, nor wanting in tas...

Truyn had insisted that the betrothal of his daughter to Oswald Lodrin should be celebrated in Bohemia. Zinka had yielded with great reluctance and sorrow, and had at last resol...

The bright spring sunshine streamed through the open bow-window of the Countess's boudoir and stretched a broad band of light at her feet. She was sitting in an arm-chair knitti...

"How can a respectable household put up with such a servant!" thought Truyn, as he waited in the hall of the little Swiss cottage which stood between the park at Schneeburg and...

The death of the young man excited universal sympathy. He was mourned not only by his relatives and friends, but by all his dependants, the peasants on his estates, nay, even by...

The Zinsenburgs have their White Lady, the Truyns their magnificent four-in-hand, which, as the fore-runner of any terrible domestic calamity, rattles past the windows of the Tr...

In his childhood, beside his father's sick-bed, Oswald had learned how to treat an invalid with rare tenderness; but what he never had been taught nor could have been taught,--w...

But what had induced the exquisitely-beautiful girl to choose such a husband as this, every one asked; and no one answered. The question had to be dismissed with a shrug, and, '...

A couple of cards of invitation were after a fleeting examination stuck into the frame of the mirror, then came two Austrian newspapers, then three letters from Austria; one add...

Arrived in Tornow only that morning, Oswald hardly finished his breakfast before he rode over to Kanitz, where, after his good-humoured despotic fashion he adjusted the whole af...

Involuntarily Oswald glanced towards the unpretending front of the tavern. Conceited and bedizened, with a dirty coat, and with bare feet thrust into morocco slippers down at th...

Night had set in, and Oswald had not yet returned to Tornow. The Countess was waiting for him, sitting beside a table whereon stood a lamp with a rose-coloured shade. Georges ha...

There are two ways of manifesting haughtiness,--that of Count Pistasch, and that of Oswald. If Pistasch had to receive an obnoxious visitor, he kept his cigar in his mouth, and...

The mood in which Conte Capriani took his place beside Kilary in the victoria that was to carry him to the place of meeting, was a very strange one. Never had he felt such pride...

Among the lodgers at the widow Schmitt's, as Charlotte's mother was called, was a sallow-faced old woman, whose room was a small, dark, comfortless hole, and who wore the same s...

If he could only have got hold of these Lodrins,--if he could only have found an opportunity to speak with them, he could have humbled their pride before now, the Conte said to...

There are many varieties of compassion not at all painful, which, when well-seasoned with a charming consciousness of virtue, may serve sensitive souls as a tolerable amusement....

The hour was three, and just before dinner; in accordance with Austrian custom, or rather with the national bad habit, they dined at Schneeburg at half-past three, although the...

The election is over. Pistasch has shaken hands with all the middle-class land-owners, and has done wonders with that haughty condescension of his wherewith he was wont to charm...

No! he had read it aright, there it stood in black and white!.... "After what I have thus told you," so the letter concluded, "it is evident that a duel between us two can be no...

After all, what had induced Conte Capriani to spend his summer in Austria? His wife and his children were unutterably bored in their exile, and he--he was consumed with secret c...

The Lodrins dined early during the warm summer months; they wished to have the cooler hours of the late afternoon for riding, driving or walking. The dinner on Thursday at which...

Pernik is the junction of several railway lines, trains coming from two separate watering-places connect here with trains from Prague, and set free the travellers who have tried...

The Malzins walked home through the park. Fritz looked perturbed. His wife held her head high, and in no agreeable mood chewed at the stalk of a rose which the Conte had cut for...

The fragrance of the elder blossoms floated sweet and strong upon the air in the dim warm stillness of the Avenue Labedoyere. The poetry that breathes in the odour of flowers no...

He had made use of the credit of the Lodrins, the accumulation of centuries, to screen his maddest pranks. True, he had never overdrawn this credit, he had never by any of his n...

The dining-room, a long narrow apartment with three windows, smelled of fresh varnish and fly-poison; the walls were decorated with dusty laurel wreaths wound about with ribbons...

"You really do not know what you wish," said Truyn in surprise when Oswald changed his mind for the third time about leaving Prague. After going with Truyn to the races on the f...

The Countess Lodrin had passed the night without lying down. When her maid appeared to see if her mistress were not ill, she had been dismissed by a mute wave of the hand. At la...

The hemorrhage had at last been arrested, the doctor sent for, and the sick man put to bed. Oswald was sitting beside him, awaiting the arrival of the physician. From time to ti...

It is evening in the drawing-room at Tornow, and the air breathes soft and fragrance-laden through the open window; the monotonous chirp of the crickets sounds loud and shrill a...

"I can't understand that," Oswald rejoined. "Her hair has grown gray--it grew gray when she was quite young,--but her features are the same. I think her very beautiful still."

Although the painting was far from portraying the charm of the Countess Lodrin's beauty in the bloom of youth, the repulsive death-mask opposite did full justice to the deceased...

Zinka and Gabrielle were at the railway station to meet Truyn, both gay, cordial and surpassingly lovely. The sight of them, and their merry talk at first brightened Oswald's mo...