Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 19, 2025
"The men seem to be losing their spirit there's no doubt of it!" exclaimed the colonel, more aloud to himself than to Fracasse, after a while. "No wonder!" replied Fracasse. Martinet though he was, he spoke in grumbling loyalty to his soldiers. "What kind of spirit is there in doing the work of navvies? Spirit! No soldiers ever fought better in invasion, at least. Look at our losses! Spirit!
They set a positive value on the intense, the exceptional; and a certain distortion is sometimes noticeable in them, as in conceptions like Victor Hugo's Quasimodo, or Gwynplaine, something of a terrible grotesque, of the macabre, as the French themselves call it; though always combined with perfect literary execution, as in Gautier's La Morte Amoureuse, or the scene of the "maimed" burial-rites of the player, dead of the frost, in his Capitaine Fracasse true "flowers of the yew."
The fair portion of the audience, hoping to attract the attention of the valiant Captain Fracasse, had arrayed themselves in all their splendour; not a diamond was left in its casket; they sparkled and flashed, every one, on necks and arms more or less white and round, and on heads more or less shapely, but all filled with an ardent desire to please the hero of the hour; so the scene was a brilliant one in every way.
When the smoke had cleared away and the "garrison" saw that he was unhurt, a murmur of astonishment arose, and one of the men exclaimed aloud that Captain Fracasse the only name by which THEY knew him must bear a charmed life; whereupon, Malartic cried, "Leave him to me, I'll soon finish him, and do you three keep a strict guard over the window there; for there will be more to follow this one if I am not mistaken."
He told him that, in the first place, he was commissioned to despatch a certain Captain Fracasse, an actor, who had dared to interfere with the love affair of a very great lord.
He did not know that the blacksmith's son, who was the fourth man from him, lay with his chin on his rifle stock and a tiny trickle of blood from a hole in his forehead running down the bridge of his nose. Fracasse, glancing along from rifle to rifle, as a weaver watches the threads of a machine loom, saw that Hugo was firing at too high an angle. "Mallin!" he called.
Captain Fracasse was kneeling by her, and thanking her, passionately, while he covered her disheveled hair with kisses, and she almost screamed out: "Go away! go away! go away!" And as he did not understand what she meant, and tried to put his arm round her waist again, she writhed, as she stammered out: "You are a wretch, and I hate you! Go away! go away!"
But his offering only served to rouse her indignation, and she spoke very severely to Maitre Bilot, commanding him to remove it instantly from her sight, and to be careful not to mention this fresh affront to Captain Fracasse.
I'm young I can't!" There was a rustle of bodies in a restless movement of drawn breaths at common thought taking form, desperately fraught with alarm to Fracasse. "You will!" Fracasse said, thrusting his revolver muzzle against the ribs of the banker's son. "If you don't, I'll shoot you dead, or you'll be trampled to death by the rush from the rear!"
Fracasse's face and the colonel's were also white white with the rigidity of carved marble, carved with a set frown of determination. Fracasse was going in with his company and the colonel with his regiment. It was their duty. Both realized the nature of the risk; and, worse, each knew that the men realized it.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking