Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 18, 2025
There Balzac went eagerly during the spring of 1832, and imbibed the strange old-world atmosphere of the exclusive Faubourg, of which he has given a masterly picture in the "Duchesse de Langeais."
Langeais is rather dark and grey; it is perhaps the simplest and most severe of all the castles of the Loire. I don't know why I should have gone to see it before any other, unless it be because I remembered that Duchesse de Langeais who figures in several of Balzac's novels, and found this association very potent.
Mme de Langeais had distributed her little patronizing, friendly, or freezing bows, with the air natural to a woman who knows the worth of her smiles, when her eyes fell upon a total stranger. Something in the man's large gravity of aspect startled her, and, with a feeling almost like dread, she turned to Mme de Maufrigneuse with, "Who is the newcomer, dear?"
Steel against steel; we shall see which heart will leave the deeper mark." For a week or so Mme de Langeais hoped to see the Marquis de Montriveau again; but he contented himself with sending his card every morning to the Hotel de Langeais.
This was all the information which Rastignac gained from a M. Muret who had purchased Goriot's business, information which confirmed the Duchesse de Langeais' suppositions, and herewith the preliminary explanation of this obscure but terrible Parisian tragedy comes to an end.
Curiously enough, his occupation in Geneva, in the rapture of his newly-found happiness, was to write the "Duchesse de Langeais," by which he intended to revenge himself on Madame de Castries, though he could not help, in his book, making her turn to him at last, when it was too late. The wound was still smarting.
Montriveau spent most of the next day in smoking an indeterminate quantity of cigars in his study window, and so got through the hours till he could dress and go to the Hotel de Langeais.
The marriage was solemnized in the Castle of Langeais in December, 1491, and two months afterwards the new queen was crowned at Saint Denis. Maximilian now sought to form a coalition against Charles, to avenge his injured honour; and his ally, Henry VII. of England, sent a letter to Lodovico Sforza, asking him to join the league and invade France from the south.
"As a reward for my generosity, you would dishonor me? Just reflect a little. I myself have thought much over this; and I think always for us both. There is such a thing as a woman's loyalty, and we can no more fail in it than you can fail in honour. I cannot blind myself. If I am yours, how, in any sense, can I be M. de Langeais' wife?
Oh! if my life were my own, I could blow my brains out." "Pooh, pooh! Keep cool," said Ronquerolles. "Duchesses do not fly off like wagtails. She cannot travel faster than three leagues an hour, and tomorrow we will ride six. Confound it! Mme de Langeais is no ordinary woman," he continued. "Tomorrow we will all of us mount and ride. The police will put us on her track during the day.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking