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Updated: June 21, 2025
The two ladies had only to stay in Paris, save their candle-ends and, as Madame Carré had enjoined, practise their scales: there were apparently no autumn visits to English country-houses in prospect for Mrs. Rooth. Peter parted with them on the understanding that in London he would look as thoroughly as possible into the question of an engagement.
At the time of which we write, the Chamber did not meddle shabbily with the budget, as it does in the deplorable days in which we now live; it did not contemptibly reduce ministerial emoluments, nor save, as they say in the kitchen, the candle-ends; on the contrary, it granted to each minister taking charge of a public department an indemnity, called an "outfit."
I was too busy to come in. By the by, I must go now, and see if the parlor is in order." I followed her with my bonnet in hand, for it was school time. She looked about, then went up to the mantel, and taking out the candle-ends from the candelabra, looked in the glass, and said, "I am a fright this morning." "Am I?" I asked over her shoulder, for I was nearly a head taller.
The light had given out in the two dressing-rooms there were oil-lamps, but in the rest of the place we had to make do with candle-ends stuck into bottles. The foyer had been made into a splendid kitchen, where hot tea and boiling soup could be got all night through. This department was worked by the local Red Cross Society, and was a great credit to them.
If the girls see us with a glowing fire, a good many of them will come in for certain sure. I have been asking the servants on the quiet how the thing is done, and it really seems to be quite easy. You collect faggots, which I know I can get for you, and small bits of coal; and I tell you what whisper, Leucha I have been saving up a few candle-ends, and they are grand for making a fire burn.
Driven by necessity, he became a pilferer of candle-ends, picking them from their sockets in the lanterns which the students carried on dark nights. Now and then one of these would remember that, when last used, his lantern had had a candle in it, and would accuse Tiki-pu of having stolen it. "It is true," he would confess; "I was hungry I have eaten it."
This miniature theater was not much bigger than a man's coffin stood on end; the upper part was open and displayed a tinseled parlor a good-sized handkerchief would have answered for a drop-curtain; the footlights consisted of a couple of candle-ends an inch long; various manikins the size of dolls appeared on the stage and made long speeches at each other, gesticulating a good deal, and they generally had a fight before they got through.
Feeling his way in the thick darkness, he went softly up the stair. Cosmo had but just left the last remnants of his candle-ends burning, and climbed glowing to his room, delighted with the success of his experiment, when those quick-following, hideous sounds rent the night, like flashes from some cloud of hellish torture. His heart seemed to stand still.
But I will note now as a curious fact that of all the impressions made on him by his stay in our town, the one most sharply imprinted on his memory was the unsightly and almost abject figure of the little provincial official, the coarse and jealous family despot, the miserly money-lender who picked up the candle-ends and scraps left from dinner, and was at the same time a passionate believer in some visionary future "social harmony," who at night gloated in ecstasies over fantastic pictures of a future phalanstery, in the approaching realisation of which, in Russia, and in our province, he believed as firmly as in his own existence.
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