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Laughter is often nothing but the froth of tears. There were faces suddenly bleached in the little group of wedding-guests, and none were whiter than the handsome features of Mathilde Sebastian, Desiree's elder sister, who looked angry, had frowned at the children, and seemed to find this simple wedding too bourgeois for her taste.
What still remained of Desiree's soul in that wretched household in which she had lived twenty years must have shuddered at that terrible declaration. He never would give up! "No matter what people may say," continued Delobelle, "it's the noblest profession in the world. You are free; you depend upon nobody. Devoted to the service of glory and the public! Ah! I know what I would do in your place.
But we discovered immediately that the four beams on the sides and ends were not enough, for Desiree's weight alone caused the skin to sag clear through in the center, though we had stretched it as tightly as possible. We were forced to unlash all the strips running from side to side and insert supports, made of smaller bones, across the middle each way.
Many talk for the same reason. What a quiet world, if those who have nothing to say said nothing! But speech or work must fail at last, and lo! the thoughts are lying in wait. Desiree's thoughts found their opportunity when she went into the drawing-room upstairs, where her wedding-breakfast had been set before the guests only eight months ago.
Barlasch broke off and thumped his brow with his fists, as if to awaken that dead memory. And all the while he was searching Desiree's face, with eyes made brighter and sharper than ever by starvation. "And do you know what he came for the Captain for he never does anything in idleness? He will run a great risk but it is for a great purpose. Do you know what he came for?" "No."
He went away without knowing, or caring to know aught of, Desiree's love; and yet, when he went to bid her farewell, the dear little cripple looked up into his face with her shy, pretty eyes, in which were plainly written the words: "I love you, if she does not." But Frantz Risler did not know how to read what was written in those eyes.
It may be that the thought that another woman loved her betrothed had made Frantz's love more endurable to her at first; and, just as we place statues on tombstones to make them appear less sad, Desiree's pretty, little, pale face at the threshold of that uninviting future had made it seem less forbidding to her. "No!
My ear quivered with the vibrations, and long after she was silent the last mellow note floated through my brain. Suddenly I became conscious of another sound, scarcely less musical. It, too, was low; so low and faint that at first I thought my ear deceived me, or that some distant echo was returning Desiree's song down the dark tunnel.
"You must do it, Harry; you must. And quick, lad! The dagger! Desiree the dagger!" What followed came to me as in a dream; my eyes were dim with the exhaustion that had overcome my body. Desiree's face disappeared from before my face then a silence then the sound of her voice as though from a distance: "Harry come! I can't find it! I dropped it when I ran across it must be here on the floor "
But she did, and I was not behind her. And, after all, it was fresh. Harry said it was "sweet." Well, perhaps it was. We bathed Desiree's hands and face and gave her water to drink, and soon after she passed into a seemingly healthy sleep. There was about ten pounds of meat left. Harry washed it in the stream and stowed it away on a rock beneath the surface of the water.
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