Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 17, 2025
I'll tell her so one of these days, if she shows me too much of her pride; and I'll tell her, too, that their little imp, although they don't suspect it, looks just like that old Pere Gardinois, and heaven knows he isn't handsome." "Oh!" exclaims Risler, unable to find words to reply. "Oh! yes, of course! I advise you to admire their child. She's always ill. She cries all night like a little cat.
It was an extraordinary thing at that hour. The whole house hold was asleep. Nothing could be heard save the footsteps of the watch-dogs on the sand, or their scratching at the foot of a tree in which an owl was screeching. An excellent opportunity to use his listening-tube! Upon putting it to his ear, M. Gardinois was assured that he had made no mistake. The sounds continued.
Very well, Georges can do my writing for twelve hundred francs a year and board for the whole family. Offer him that from me, and come." She rose indignantly. She had come as his child and he had received her as a beggar. They had not reached that point yet, thank God! "Do you think so?" queried M. Gardinois, with a savage light in his eye.
Only old Gardinois and his little, gimlet-like eyes were to be feared; but Sidonie entertained him, and even if he had discovered anything, he was not the man to interfere with her future. Her hour of triumph was near, when a sudden, unforeseen disaster blasted her hopes. One Sunday morning M. Fromont was brought back fatally wounded from a hunting expedition.
Wild flowers always seemed to her like the flowers of the poor, something like her lilac dress. She remembered that she had seen flowers of a different sort at the house of M. Gardinois, at the Chateau de Savigny, in the hothouses, on the balconies, and all about the gravelled courtyard bordered with tall urns. Those were the flowers she loved; that was her idea of the country!
In the idleness consequent upon his wealth, M. Gardinois, being greatly bored in Paris, lived at Savigny throughout the year, and the Fromonts lived with him during the summer. Madame Fromont was a mild, dull woman, whom her father's brutal despotism had early molded to passive obedience for life.
Unluckily, the instrument was so powerful that it exaggerated all the noises, confused them and prolonged them, and the powerful, regular ticking of a great clock, the cries of a paroquet kept in one of the lower rooms, the clucking of a hen in search of a lost kernel of corn, were all Monsieur Gardinois could hear when he applied his ear to the tube.
His thoughts were entirely engrossed by the joy, the pride of his triumph. So they were conquered at last, those proud upstarts of Fromonts! So they needed old Gardinois at last, did they? Vanity, his dominating passion, overflowed in his whole manner, do what he would.
It was an extraordinary thing at that hour. The whole house hold was asleep. Nothing could be heard save the footsteps of the watch-dogs on the sand, or their scratching at the foot of a tree in which an owl was screeching. An excellent opportunity to use his listening-tube! Upon putting it to his ear, M. Gardinois was assured that he had made no mistake. The sounds continued.
Sometimes, while Grandfather Gardinois, who had laid aside in her honor his old-fashioned hunting-jackets and swanskin waistcoats, was jesting with her, amusing himself by contradicting her in order to draw out a sharp reply, she would gaze steadily, coldly into his eyes, without replying. Ah! if only he were ten years younger! But the thought of becoming Madame Gardinois did not long occupy her.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking