United States or Australia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The old countess had summoned two relatives, both elderly canonesses, to aid her in her assault upon the intruder, and perhaps they were the persons who advised locking up Sir Casper's nurse, to whom they denied the right of still calling herself the bride of the young master of the house. Frau Christine had arrived at the right time. Els was beginning to lose courage.
From among these, as the canonesses' litter jogged along, an odd figure advanced toward Odo, who had obtained leave to do the last mile of the journey on foot. This was a plump abate in tattered ecclesiastical dress, his shoes white as a miller's and the perspiration streaking his face as he laboured along in the dust.
Her husband was old, he was ugly, he was not attractive; he may have been tiresome and rather loathsome in his constant attendance; he may even have smelt of brandy every now and then; but as marriages had been invented in order to give young women a position in the world, husbands were not expected to be much more than drawbacks to the situation; and as to the sense of life-long dependence upon an individual, as to the desire for love and sympathy, it was still too early in the eighteenth century, and perhaps, also, too early in the life of a half-Flemish, half-German girl, very childish still in aspect, and brought up in the worldly wisdom of a noble chapter of canonesses, to expect anything of that kind.
Thus we passed the evening in discourse upon the object of my mission, and I observed that she took a singular pleasure in talking upon it in all our succeeding conferences when I thought proper to introduce it. The ball being ended, we went to hear vespers at the church of the Canonesses, an order of nuns of which we have none in France.
When they had reached the castle, Marie Louise was conducted to her apartments by the Emperor and the Empress, and there she found awaiting her, to present their respects, the authorities of the city, the canonesses of the two noble chapters of the province, those of the court who had not gone to meet her, and a large household chosen by the Emperor from his most distinguished chamberlains.
The ladies at this, with exclamations of pity, called on the lay-brothers for broth and cordials, and bidding the porter enquire more particularly into the history of the unhappy ecclesiastic, hastened away with Odo to the rector's parlour. Next morning betimes all were afoot for the procession, which the canonesses were to witness from the monastery windows.
Her dominion extended over two hundred villages, whose inhabitants paid her both feudal dues and ecclesiastical tithes. Nor were her duties onerous. She spent a large part of her time in Strasburg, and went to the theatre without scruple. She traveled a good deal in the neighborhood, and was a familiar figure at some of the petty courts on the Rhine. The canonesses followed her good example.
The old countess had summoned two relatives, both elderly canonesses, to aid her in her assault upon the intruder, and perhaps they were the persons who advised locking up Sir Casper's nurse, to whom they denied the right of still calling herself the bride of the young master of the house. Frau Christine had arrived at the right time. Els was beginning to lose courage.
The failure of bodily activity seemed to have doubled his moral vigour, and the walls shook with the vehemence of his commands. The Marchioness was sunk in a state of placid apathy from which only her husband's outbursts roused her; one of the canonesses was dead, and the other, drier and more shrivelled than ever, pined in her corner like a statue whose mate is broken.
This stroke visibly touched the canonesses, still soft from the macerations of the morning; and Donna Livia compassionately asked how he had subsisted since his rupture with the Bishop.
Word Of The Day