An Historical Mystery (The Gondreville Mystery). Honore de Balzac

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An Historical Mystery (The Gondreville Mystery) - Honore de Balzac

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       Honoré de Balzac

      An Historical Mystery (The Gondreville Mystery)

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664628848

       AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY

       PART I

       CHAPTER I. JUDAS

       CHAPTER II. A CRIME RELINQUISHED

       CHAPTER III. THE MASK THROWN OFF

       CHAPTER IV. LAURENCE DE CINQ-CYGNE

       CHAPTER V. ROYALIST HOMES AND PORTRAITS UNDER THE CONSULATE

       CHAPTER VI. A DOMICILIARY VISIT

       CHAPTER VII. A FOREST NOOK

       CHAPTER VIII. TRIALS OF THE POLICE

       CHAPTER IX. FOILED

       PART II.

       CHAPTER X. ONE AND THE SAME, YET A TWO-FOLD LOVE

       CHAPTER XI. WISE COUNSEL

       CHAPTER XII. THE FACTS OF A MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR

       CHAPTER XIII. THE CODE OF BRUMAIRE, YEAR IV.

       CHAPTER XIV. THE ARRESTS

       CHAPTER XV. DOUBTS AND FEARS OF COUNSEL

       CHAPTER XVI. MARTHE INVEIGLED

       CHAPTER XVII. THE TRIAL

       CHAPTER XVIII. TRIAL CONTINUED: CRUEL VICISSITUDES

       CHAPTER XIX. THE EMPEROR’S BIVOUAC

       CHAPTER XX. THE MYSTERY SOLVED

       ADDENDUM

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      The autumn of the year 1803 was one of the finest in the early part of that period of the present century which we now call “Empire.” Rain had refreshed the earth during the month of October, so that the trees were still green and leafy in November. The French people were beginning to put faith in a secret understanding between the skies and Bonaparte, then declared Consul for life—a belief in which that man owes part of his prestige; strange to say, on the day the sun failed him, in 1812, his luck ceased!

      About four in the afternoon on the fifteenth of November, 1803, the sun was casting what looked like scarlet dust upon the venerable tops of four rows of elms in a long baronial avenue, and sparkling on the sand and grassy places of an immense rond-point, such as we often see in the country where land is cheap enough to be sacrificed to ornament. The air was so pure, the atmosphere so tempered that a family was sitting out of doors as if it were summer. A man dressed in a hunting-jacket of green drilling with green buttons, and breeches of the same stuff, and wearing shoes with thin soles and gaiters to the knee, was cleaning a gun with the minute care a skilful huntsman gives to the work in his leisure hours. This man had neither game nor game-bag, nor any of the accoutrements which denote either departure for a hunt or the return from it; and two women sitting near were looking at him as though beset by a terror they could ill-conceal. Any one observing the scene taking place in this leafy nook would have shuddered, as the old mother-in-law and the wife of the man we speak of were now shuddering. A huntsman does not take such minute precautions with his weapon to kill small game, neither does he use, in the department of the Aube, a heavy rifled carbine.

      “Shall you kill a roe-buck, Michu?” said his handsome young wife, trying to assume a laughing air.

      Before replying, Michu looked at his dog, which had been lying in the sun, its paws stretched out and its nose on its paws, in the charming attitude of a trained hunter. The animal had just raised its head and was snuffing the air, first down the avenue nearly a mile long which stretched before them, and then up the cross road where it entered the rond-point to the left.

      “No,” answered Michu, “but a brute I do not wish to miss, a lynx.”

      The dog, a magnificent spaniel, white with brown spots, growled.

      “Hah!” said Michu, talking to himself, “spies! the country swarms with them.”

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