United States or Panama ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Chillon's damping of her enthusiasm sank her to a mere breathing body, miserably an animal body, no comrade for a valiant brother; this young man's feeble consort, perhaps: and a creature thirsting for pleasure, disposed to sigh in the prospect of caresses. Enthusiasm gone, her spirited imagination of active work on the field of danger beside her brother flapped a broken wing.
That was not much balm to Master Chillon's wound. He returned to his mother quite heavy, unlike a young man; and the unhappy lady, though she knew, him to be bitterly sensitive on the point of honour, and especially as to everything relating to her, saw herself compelled to tell him the history of her life, to save him, as she thought, from these chivalrous vindications of her good name.
Yesterday's parting between Chillon and Henrietta had taught her to know some little about love; and if her voice had been heeded by Chillon's beloved, it would not have been a parting. Her only success was to bring a flood of tears from Henrietta.
That being settled, some appearance of equanimity returned; she talked of the scarlet business as one she participated in as a distant spectator. Chillon's chief was hurrying the embarkation of his troops; within ten days the whole expedition would be afloat. She was to post to London for further purchases, he following to take leave of his wife and babe.
She is contented though she has not seen him again and has not the look of expecting to see him. She still wears the kind of afterglow. 'Chillon's Viennese waltz was played by the band: played a second time, special request, conveyed to the leader by Prince Ferdinand. True, most true, she longs to be home across the water.
Her duty to stay in England with Chillon's fair wife crossed the beckoning pages like a black smoke. Her passion to go and share her brother's dangers left the question of its righteousness at each fall of the big breath. Her uncle's grey head on his pillow was like a flintstone in chalk under her look by light of dawn; the chin had dropped.
Already, at intervals, now that action on a foreign field of the thunders and lightnings was denied, imagination revealed her dissolving to the union with her husband, and cried her comment on herself as the world's basest of women for submitting to it while Chillon's life ran risks; until finally she said: 'Not before I have my brother home safe! an exclamation equal to a vow.
It is built of stone, and seems to have been anciently covered with plaster, which imparts the whiteness to which Byron does much more than justice, when he speaks of "Chillon's snow-white battlements."
"In Chillon's dungeons, deep and old, There are seven columns, massy and gray, Dim with a dull, imprisoned ray A sunbeam that hath lost its way, And through the crevice and the cleft Of the thick wall is fallen and left Creeping o'er the floor so damp, Like a marsh's meteor lamp." In repeating these lines, the teacher spoke in a strong foreign accent.
'That 's love of country! that 's their love of wild Wales, Carinthia. There was a quiet interrogation in Chillon's turn of the head at this fervent simpleton. 'I love them for that hum, said she. 'It joins one in me. 'Call to them any day, they are up, ready to march! 'Oh, dear souls! Carinthia said. Her breath drew in. The three were dumb.
Word Of The Day