The new terror

Our parents as good as betrothed us from our earliest infancy. When I was twelve and she was eight, our friends used to remark that we made a charming couple, and our mothers we...

My father who was an iron manufacturer intended to take me into his works, but first of all he was bent on my undergoing a complete course of study in one of those Technical Ins...

It was not that I entertained the slightest doubt of Cordélia’s love, but I fancied that my uncle was no longer favorable to our union, and had contrived the journey in order th...

When I returned to Vascoeuil a letter lay waiting for me. It bore the Paris postmark, and the address was written in a handwriting unknown to me. On opening it I found a line fr...

It was at this juncture that Surdon came in carrying, with some difficulty, a large flat package wrapped in canvas upon which a small square piece of cardboard was pinned bearin...

“I say, Uncle, you must excuse me,” I began, “but accident led me across the path of a man who was gazing gloomily at the house at Hennequeville, and I was told he was a painter...

Mathilde and Surdon came hurrying into the room and were not less terrified than I was to discover Cordélia in this statue-like condition. The only thing which we could be certa...

He had to seek the famous doctor at an official function. Not that he had, however, to drag him away by main force. The story which he told, straightway induced the doctor to le...

I must admit that, at first, I thought I should have but to rejoice, for as the worthy doctor had led me to anticipate, Cordélia displayed, after his departure, a perfectly free...

I have taken particular care to trace in detail the various stages of this extraordinary story in order that the reader who would fain judge us, notwithstanding the jury’s verdi...

I did not now summon any assistance. I was seized with a cold grim fury of despair which called for no witnesses. I carried Cordélia into the next room and laid her on the bed,...

I heard a kind of whisper, a kind of soft whisper. It was still some distance away, but it indubitably came from a human being who was drawing nearer, but drawing nearer without...

When I reached the bank, Patrick and the skiff were hidden from view behind the reeds which had closed in upon him. A few hundred yards farther on the river made a bend and left...

Dear, dear, dear Cordélia! What splendid weeks were ours and how completely we forgot the doleful Patrick! I am bound to say that I neglected nothing to bring about this result....

Surdon had engaged a suite of rooms for us at the Hotel Danieli on the Riva degli Schiavoni. It was in this hotel, it seems, that Alfred de Musset fell ill and learned the treac...

“Of course, that would be the best thing to do, for there’s no question that he isn’t chasing you.”—The worthy Surdon dared not make any allusion to “madame”—“This Patrick assum...

When I read over again the preceding pages I find nothing in them to eliminate, for they truthfully set down the intolerable situation in which I found myself after Surdon infor...

And now this pierced heart which the greatest thief that ever lived had burgled from its bodily prison is all mine. I can kneel in peace before the urn in which I have reverentl...

O Cordélia, you died by my hand! If I still live, be assured that it is by way of atonement. How often have I conjured up your image before the mortal remains of your heart! How...

without arms or legs; for after all I was beginning to see through most of the extraordinary happenings which had so greatly stirred my mind; and though the cripples, by their p...