Fromont and Risler -- Volume 1

, prone to fall asleep like peasants. They went in carriages to meet the returning hunters in the cool air of the autumn evening. The mist arose from the fields, from which the crops had been gat

ickly homeward with the fresh air blowing in their faces. The dining

a little too much, perhaps, and seemed to the male guests the only woman in the party. Her success completed Georges's intoxication; but as his advances became more pronounced, she showed more and more reserve. Thereupon

bitious project, her coquettish, false nature found a strange fascination

fidence, in complete ignorance of treachery and falsehood. M. Fromont thought of nothing but his business. His wife polished her jewels with frenzied energy. Only old Gardin

r, when a sudden, unforesee

ded from a hunting expedition. A bullet intended for a deer

te for Paris. Claire, frantic with grief, entered the room where her father lay on his deathb

l meeting, painful and stealthy, and made solemn by the proximity of death. They vowed, however,

sad jou

s compelled to describe her visit to the smallest detail; discuss the inmates of the chateau, the guests, the entertainments, the dinners, and the final catastrophe. What t

e; and the glances with which he followed her, the words he addr

e rights as an accepted and impatient lover, and little Chebe was obliged to emerge from

e had obtained a good situation; and now an engineer's berth in the South, at the smelting-furnaces

ust either keep her promise or invent an excuse

ht and changing mirrors, which reflected all the thoughts of others without betraying any of her own. It may be that the thought that another woman loved her betrothed had made Frantz's love more endurable to

le and honorable pretext for fr

y. I should suffer too much from remorse,-poor Desiree! Haven't you noticed how badly she looks since I came home

pirit, Madame Chebe looked upon that as a rather

't rich. A husband like Frant

on, neither the tears shed by Frantz, who was exasperated by her refusal to fulfil her promise, enveloped as it was in vague reasons which she would not even explain to him,

She's an angel!" he said to his

Grand Combe seemed too near in his frenzied longing for flight, he asked and obtained an appointment as overseer on the Suez Canal at Ismailia. He went away without knowing, or caring to

u, if she

t know how to read what

her friend had gone, the lame girl, with her charming morsel of illusion, inherited from he

wait f

fullest extent, as if they were all going, one after ano

the unhappy engineer declared that he was about to set sail, with a broken heart, on the transport Sahib, "a sailing-ship and steamship combined, with engines of fifteen-hundred-horse powe

ere left unanswered. To be sure, she knew through Risler that Georges was very busy, and that his uncle's death had thrown the man

o distinguish her lover, watched him as he went to and fro across the yards and among the buildings; and in the afternoon, when it was time for the train to start for Savi

more apparent. To think that by raising her voice a little she could make him turn toward the place where sh

the excellent Risler rushed into your parents' room with an ex

was to marry his cousin Claire, and that, as he was certainly unequal to the task of carrying on the business a

Chebe sat by the table mending; M. Chebe before the fire drying his clothes, which were wet through by his having walked a long distance in the rain. Oh! that miserable room, overflowing with gloom and en

ible by the contrast between the riches that eluded your outstretched ha

rtains, the unhappy creature fancied that Georges's wedding-coaches were driving through the street; and she h

w of the sacrifice her friend had made for her, triumphed over the disease. But for a long while Sidonie was very

t. Her friends were sorely perplexed, and strove to discover the cause of that singular state of mind, which w

ad dared to whisper it; but it was he w

yes were so soft when she glanced at him, that the honest fellow instantly became as fond of her as

en the narrow setting of ten years of her life. That haughty smile, in which there was a touch of profound pity and of scorn as well, such scorn as a parvenu feels for his poor beginnings,

s little Chebe? She is