The Tragic Comedians, Complete

the enemy's counter-stroke. Count Walburg and his companion b

em; for the future she belonged to her parents; she had left the city. She knew not where

in his hand. That was the dumb oration of a man shocked by the outrage upon passionate feeling to the state

ly master of his acts because he had not spoken, a

t Walburg, whose companion was not disposed to go without

dopt the responsibility of th

d

li

unt Walburg: 'These vi

His friend was not a man of the sword, and was not under the obl

doubt the unselfishness of his love of Dejaneira. Yes, really; they would think it was not a chivalrous love: they would consider that he thought of himself too much. They would doubt, too, of his being a gentleman! Partial glimpses of hi

u hate her. Do not. She 's a riddle, but no worse than the rest of the tangle. She gives me up? Pooh! She writes it. She writes anything. And that vilest, I say, I will make more enviable, more Clotilde! he thundered her signature in an amazement, broken suddenly by the sight of her putting her name to the letter. She had done that, written her name to the renunciation of him! No individual could bear the sight of such a crime, and no suffering man could be appeased by a single victim to atone for it. Her sex must be slaughtered; he raged against the woman; she became that ancient poisonous thing, the woman; his fury would not distinguish her as Clotilde, though the name had started him, and it was his knowledge of the particular sinner which drew down his curses on the sex. He twisted his body, hugging at his br

ed out on him, and brought the fresh agony of a reminder of his great-heartedness. 'For that woman-Tresten, you know me-I would have sacrificed for that woman fortune and life, my hope, my duty, my immortality. She knew it, and she-look!' he unwrinkled the letter carefully for it to be legible, and clenched it in a ball.' Signs her name, signs her name, her name!-God of heaven! it would be incredible in a holy chronicle-s

man she now pierces with ice, kept hell down under bolt and bar-worse, I believe, broke a good woman's heart! that never a breath should rise that could accuse her on suspicion, or in malice, or by accident, justly, or with a shadow of truth. "I think it best for us both." So she thinks for me! She not only decides, she thinks; she is the active principle; 't

r can ask of a man; more than any man, to my knowledge, would have done, and now it's war. I declare war on them. They will have it! I mean to take that girl from them-snatch or catch! The girl is my girl, and if there are laws against my having my own,

ere she was. But already the pen was at

otilde herself, she in person; he saw it as the woman, and saw himself translucent in the great luminousness; and behind it all was dark, as in front. That one day was the sun of his life. It had been a day of rain, and he beheld it in memory just as it had been, with the dark threaded air, the dripping streets; and he glorified it past all daily radiance.

the house and slip the letter to her maid; others were told off to bribe and hound the

e, devoted to them he loved, and a battery on them he opposed. The colonel had been the confidant of the baroness's grief over this love-passion of Alvan's, and her resignation. He shared her doubts of Clotilde's nobility of charac

would waste the treasure. I make of her what I will, and she knows it, and knows that she hangs on me to flourish worthily. I breathe the very soul of the woman into her. As for that letter of hers-' it burnt him this time to speak of the letter: 'she may write and write! She's weak, thin, a reed; she-let her be! Say of her when she plays beast-she is absent from Alvan! I can forgive. The letter's nothing; it means nothing-except "Thou fool, Alvan, to let me go." Yes, that! Her people are ac

ts of his system being well in action, and when that is the case with a big

e expected rather the summons of an armed mob at his heels