Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 4, 2025
I paid my last penny to Madame Magnotte this morning. I have no money to take me back to England, even if I dared go there and I dare not. I have prayed for courage, for strength to go back, but my prayers have not been heard; and there is nothing for me but to die. What would be the sin of my throwing myself into that river! I must die; I shall die of starvation in the streets."
The ladies of the Pension Magnotte were for the most part of mature age and unattractive appearance two or three lonely spinsters, eking out their pitiful little incomes as best they might, by the surreptitious sale of delicate embroideries, confectioned in their dismal leisure; and a fat elderly widow, popularly supposed to be enormously rich, but of miserly propensities.
But one night the ice melted, the statue of snow became in a moment a passionate, grief-stricken woman. It was one bright evening late in May. Ah, how near at hand was the appointed date of those nuptials to which the household of Beaubocage looked forward with supreme happiness! The old ladies of the Pension Magnotte were for the most part out of doors. The long saloon was almost empty.
That was a question which also presented itself to the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, of Beaubocage in esse, and Cotenoir in posse. Madame Meynell rarely appeared at the common breakfast in the grim dining-room of the Pension Magnotte. Gustave was therefore in nowise surprised to miss her on this particular morning. He took a cup of coffee, and hurried off to his daily duties.
I will take you back to the Pension Magnotte directly; but you must first promise to be my wife." "Your wife! O, no, no, no! That is impossible." "Because you do not love me," said Gustave, with mournful gravity. "Because I am not worthy of you." Humiliation and self-reproach unspeakable were conveyed in those few words. "You are worth all the stars to me.
The lovers left the Pension Magnotte one bright summer morning, and journeyed to Jersey, where, after a fortnight's sojourn, the English Protestant church united them in the bonds of matrimony. Susan was a Protestant, Gustave a Catholic, but the difference of religion divided them no more than the difference of country.
There were only Gustave, Madame Magnotte, and the little music-mistress, who sat at her piano, with the western sunlight shining full upon her, rosy-hued and glorious, surrounding her with its soft radiance until she looked like a humble St. Cecilia. Madame Meynell had seated herself close to the piano, and was listening to the music.
Two months had elapsed since the bleak spring morning on which Gustave Lenoble found the solitary lady under the leafless trees of the Luxembourg gardens. The inmates of the Pension Magnotte had grown accustomed to her presence, to her silence, her settled sadness, and troubled themselves no further respecting herself or her antecedents.
"It must be very cold and cheerless for you in your bedroom," said Madame Magnotte; "why not spend your evening with us, in a pleasant and social manner?" "You are very good, madame," murmured the Englishwoman, in the slow timid accents that had so plaintive a sound to Gustave's ear; "if you wish it, I will stay."
Francis the First, who listened with bent knee and bare head to his mother's discourse, was not more reverential to that noble Savoyarde than was Gustave to the shabby-genteel maiden ladies of the Pension Magnotte. In truth, this young man had a heart pitiful and tender as the heart of woman.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking