United States or Austria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Besides, I told Miou-Matou just now, if my children do as I tell them, they will not take a leaf or a peach-stone from this grande dame how does she call herself? Mme. Corona d'Amague!" Cecil looked up quickly: "Why not?" Cigarette flashed on him her brilliant, brown eyes with a fire that amazed him. "Because we are soldiers, not paupers!" "Surely; but "
He stood under the tawny awning of the Moorish house, with the thin, glazed card in his hand. On it was printed: "Mme. la Princesse Corona d'Amague, "Hotel Corona, Paris." In the corner was written, "Villa Aiaussa, Algiers." He thrust it in the folds of his sash, and turned within. "Do you know her?" he asked Ben Arsli. The old man shook his head.
Cigarette was as caustic as a Voltaire this morning. Coming through the entrance of the hospital, she had casually heard that Mme. la Princesse Corona d'Amague had made a gift of singular munificence and mercy to the invalid soldiers a gift of wine, of fruit, of flowers, that would brighten their long, dreary hours for many weeks.
Corona d'Amague had been his friend; the only one for whom he had ever sought to break her unvarying indifference to her lovers, but for whom even he had pleaded vainly until one autumn season, when they had stayed together at a great archducal castle in South Austria.
"There is no occasion for it. Mme. Corona d'Amague, my sister," he continued, to the officers present, "became accidentally acquainted with the skill at sculpture of this Corporal of yours; he appeared to her a man of much refinement and good breeding. She chanced to name him to me, and feeling some pity "
Of a surety it was not ambition that had allied her, on his death-bed, with Beltran Corona d'Amague; but what it was the world could never tell precisely.
With which fiery and bitter enunciation of her views on the gifts of the Princesse Corona d'Amague, Cigarette struck light to her brule-guele, and thrusting it between her lips, with her hands in the folds of her scarlet waist-sash, went off with the light, swift step natural to her, exaggerated into the carriage she had learned of the Zouaves; laughing her good-morrows noisily to this and that trooper as she passed their couches, and not dropping her voice even as she passed the place where the dead lay, but singing, as loud as she could, the most impudent drinking-song out of the taverns of the Spahis that ever celebrated wine, women, and war in the lawlessness of the lingua Sabir.
But she was amazed to see the English guest change color with a haughty anger that he strove to subdue as he half rose and answered her with an accent in his voice that reminded her she knew not why of Bel-a-faire-peur and of Marquise. "Mme. la Princess Corona d'Amague is my sister; why do you venture to couple the name of this Chasseur with hers?"
"One would imagine I was just out of a convent, and weaving a marvelous romance from a mystery and a tristesse, because the first soldier I notice in Algeria has a gentleman's voice and is ill treated by his officers!" she thought with a smile, while she opened the poems which had that day arrived, radiant in the creamy vellum, the white velvet, and the gold of a dedication copy, with the coronet of the Corona d'Amague on their binding.
Many beside the old Moslem had thought it "the fairest that e'er the sun shone on," and held one grave, lustrous glance of the blue imperial eyes above aught else on earth. Many had loved her all without return. Yet, although only twenty years had passed over her proud head, the Princesse Corona d'Amague had been wedded and been widowed.
Word Of The Day