The Drums of War

We had been travelling since morning, three of us--my father, General Count Mahon, myself, and Joubert--to say nothing of Marengo the boarhound which followed our carriage. The...

Nowadays, when the Continent is inundated with travellers, when you are received at a great hotel with about as much consideration as a pauper is received at a workhouse, it is...

I was awakened by the sound of a band, and the tramp, tramp, tramp of a regiment of soldiers--solid, rhythmical and earthshaking as the footsteps of the Statue of the Commander.

Only a few years ago Charcot assured me that this strange sensation of the mind is a result of inequality in the rhythm of thought, a mechanical accident affecting one side of t...

But to the mind of a child the moment is everything. Had I been a man, my inamorata would have driven me to solitude and cigars. Being what I was, supper pushed her image to one...

I was awakened by the note of a horn blown by some ranger in the forest. The sun was shining in through the window, night had vanished with all its dreams and fears, and Joubert...

When I came down to breakfast, released from arrest by special intervention of the Baron, Carl was not there. Gretel said he had caught a cold from his wetting, and was confined...

Ever since I could perceive the difference between musical sounds, music has fascinated me, thrilled me, filled me with hauntings. Music can make me drunk, music can make me eve...

"My knife. Ha! I've caught you. Cutting your sticks and carving your name with my couteau de chasse! You have been to my bedroom. Don't answer me! You have been to my bedroom, a...

The door leading to my father's room was open. This did not give me any comfort--rather the reverse; for the next room was in darkness, and I could not help imagining faces peep...

As he helped me to dress, he told me of what had occurred. The gentlemen below had been playing cards when the shrieks of Vogel had sundered the cardplayers like the sword of de...

We passed through Homburg at four o'clock, and at six of a seraphic morning spired Frankfort rose before us like a city in a fairy tale, so beautiful, so vague, so ethereal one...

I was dreaming of the Countess Feliciani. She had changed all of a sudden, by the alchemy of dreamland, into little Carl. We were running together down the forest path in the wo...

"Go home!" said my father, putting me into the carriage. "I will return on foot. You have disgraced yourself; you have disgraced me. Hand yourself over to Joubert. You are to be...

Since my mother's death, my father had not lived in the château. He was too grand to let it, so it was placed in the hands of a caretaker. It was a gloomy house, dating from 157...

I had fallen into a disused gravel-pit, treacherously hidden by the bushes, so they told me afterwards. When I recovered from my stunned condition, my cries for help had attract...

The death of my father cast me into an entirely new life. Anyone less fitting than the Vicomte Armand de Chatellan to be the guardian of a child of nine it would be hard to imag...

"I am due to dine at the Duc de Bassano's," said my guardian as I parted with him outside the Tuileries. "So, if we do not see one another till to-morrow morning, au revoir. You...

He looked at a big clock over a café on the opposite side of the way, and sighed. It pointed to a quarter to nine. He was due at La Closerie de Lilas at ten; he was a member of...

The meeting with Eloise so disturbed my mind that I had quite forgotten one thing--Franzius. I had promised to see him after the ball--an impossible promise to fulfil considerin...

In the Rue du Petit Thouars I sent the carriage home. The horses had done over forty miles. I would take Eloise down to Etiolles by rail, or we would hire a carriage. It did not...

We were sitting in the little room of the Pavilion that served as dining-room and drawing-room combined; the windows were open, the sun had set, and the birds in the wood were g...

Eloise, without a hat, working in the little garden of the Pavilion, held up a huge spade for my inspection. The moat divided us, and I had my foot on the drawbridge, preparing...

We had finished our meal--simple enough, goodness knows. Our drink had been milk carried in one of those clear glass bottles used for vin de Grave, and the bottle lay on the gra...

I called early at his wretched lodging in the Rue Dijon; the sound of his violin led me upstairs, and I found him, seated on the side of his bed, playing, his soul in Germany or...

It was, even in 1869, an old-fashioned cottage, set back in a clearing amidst the trees. The tall pines seemed to have stepped back to give it room, and were eternally blowing t...

And I did not love her at all. Nor did she love me. It was just as though the great tide of Nature had seized us, innocently floating, and flung us together, drifted us together...

It was nine o'clock, and the old gentleman received me in his dressing-room and in his dressing-gown. Beril had just shaved him, and he was examining his rubicund, jovial face i...

I shall never forget that déjeûner, and the kindness of my guardian to poor Franzius. The tall footmen who served us may have wondered at this very unaccustomed guest; but had t...

"We will give them a good send-off," said my guardian, as, some days later, we discussed the matter of Eloise's wedding. "Let them be married at Etiolles; have the village en fê...

He did not seem to hear my reply, but sat gazing out of the carriage-window at the streets we were passing through, and the people, gazing at them contemplatively and from Olymp...

I _could_ not but see the cards being dealt by some mysterious hand; I could not but remember that Von Lichtenberg, a nobleman, a man of honour, the friend of his King, and pres...

The rehearsal had almost wrecked Franzius, but he was all right now; the ship was built; only the launching remained. As to Eloise, in six months she had altered subtly yet marv...

The birds were calling to each other from tree to tree; clumps of violets were showing their blue amidst the brown of last autumn's fallen leaves, and the forest, half fledged,...

On the afternoon of the same day upon which I sent him my seconds, Baron Carl von Lichtenberg left Paris. So quietly had the whole affair been transacted at the Opera that not t...

They did not see a rat leaving a sinking ship: they saw a jovial old gentleman, with a cigar in his mouth, entering a first-class carriage, a nobleman departing to visit his est...

Joubert was standing by the window, my bath-towels over his arm. He had drawn up the blind, and the light of early morning filled the room. I could have cursed Joubert, for he h...

"Oh, it is unpleasant enough, but the thing is perfectly in order. You need have no fear. Yes, yes; I will lead you to her. You will be at the Place Vendôme, I suppose? There wi...

Oh, caprice of a woman! To leave me like that in a moment of anger and jealousy, never to wait an explanation; to let fall what might be the curtain of eternal separation with a...

I walked up and down. She had been here an hour ago--here an hour ago--and I had been walking the streets unconscious of the fact! The war which had threatened to destroy my las...

All that winter from the passing of the investing army to the time when the siege guns began to shake earth and sky with their ceaseless roar and from then to the spring, we rem...