The cobbler of Nîmes

It was the month of June, 1703, and about noontide on the last day of the week. The fair in the market-place at Nîmes was therefore at its height. A juggler was swallowing a swo...

The two, le Bossu and his guest, entered a small room fitted up as a shop. The window was open and across the unused fireplace were suspended half a dozen shoes of various sizes...

The first day of the week Petit Bossu set his house in order. He swept the floor of the shop and put a cold dinner on the kitchen table that his guest might eat in his absence....

The sun shone cheerfully in the dining room of the château. The long windows were open, and the soft June air came in, laden with the sweetness of the garden. The room was of mo...

In the upper room of the shop of Two Shoes sat a desperate man. The sun did not shine for François d’Aguesseau, and in the little court off the Rue St. Antoine there were no hon...

A week had passed and the afternoon sun was shining red on the windows of St. Cyr, while the shadows lengthened in the rambling old garden. Rosaline was feeding her doves beside...

The next morning Rosaline was once more among her flowers. There was no gardener at the château now, and it was the young girl’s custom to weed and tend her own flower beds. She...

The little hunchback, Charlot, sat patiently at his cobbler’s bench making a pair of shoes. The sun was not shining in his window; it shone on the house across the court, and th...

The priest’s stout figure seemed to fill Charlot’s little shop, and he stood with his hands crossed behind his back looking down placidly at the shoemaker. He had a round, rosy,...

Madame de St. Cyr was leaning back in her chair, her white hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed in an absent gaze on the space outside the sitting-room window. Opposite to he...

It was half an hour before moonrise and the night was supremely still. The warm air of midsummer stirred not even a leaf on the trees. There was no sound but the footsteps of th...

The months of the terrible summer of 1703 waned, and autumn came. Fire and sword had laid waste in Languedoc. It had been a reign of terror. The chieftains of the Camisards swee...

That night, when the shutters were closed and the doors secured, the family sat in an upper room. Babet had come in to hear the Bible read by Madame de St. Cyr, and they were al...

The day dawned calm, after the night of suspense; the October sky was full of light clouds, and there was a chill in the air, the first suggestion of winter, and the birds twitt...

The shadows had deepened; night already lay in the little woodland; the distant hills were purple against the pale horizon. The rising wind turned the wheel on the old mill; the...

Beyond the old windmill, on the estate of St. Cyr, the stream turned its course westward and tumbling over a rock, fell four or five feet into a broader rivulet and then flowed...

Rosaline did not look at M. de Baudri, but beyond him into the room, and she saw her grandmother’s armchair vacant, and the door that led into the bedroom beyond stood open. The...

Meanwhile a very different scene had been enacted in the kitchen, where Babet had confronted the cobbler and poured upon his devoted head a volley of questions. She had gone out...

It was daybreak; the pale sky was luminous, and the golden east throbbed with the approaching glory. Already the hill-tops were radiant, but the low country lay in the shadow, a...

Père Ambroise was plentifully supplied with this world’s goods, and he had a house of his own in Nîmes, not a hundred yards from the Esplanade, where he lived in comfort and sec...

The next morning found Charlot in his shop. He had spread his tools and leather on his bench with a pretence of work, but he was not working. He sat watching his door with eager...

When Rosaline came to herself it was with a bewildered recollection of some horrible event, and, for a few moments, she was scarcely conscious of her surroundings. Then she open...

The two women and le Bossu had followed the course of the stream, walking rapidly along the bank, and now they descended the rocky path by the cataract. They were travelling wes...

An hour later the dusty little cavalcade filed slowly up a steep and rocky hill and drew rein beside a strip of woodland on the summit. On every side the country rolled away, ba...

Two weeks later a party of wayfarers came to the old mill at St. Cyr. The door was fastened, but they opened it, only to recoil with horror. They found a hideous old woman tied...