Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Before the young man could answer, Grio broke in. "So you have followed me here, have you?" he cried, striking his jug on the table and glaring across the board at the offender. "You weren't content to escape last night it seems. Now " "Enough!" Basterga muttered, the keen expression of his face unchanged. "Softly! Softly! Where are we? I don't understand. What is this? Last night "
The Syndic hated her for the hour of anguish through which he had just passed, hated her for the price he shuddered to think of it which he must now pay for his life. He hated her for his present humiliation, he hated her for his future shame. She seemed to blame for all. "You took it," Basterga answered, acknowledging her words only by a disdainful shrug, "and gave it to your mother.
To have life within sight, to know it within this room, perhaps within reach " "Not quite that," Basterga murmured, his eyes wandering to the steel casket, chained to the wall beside the hearth. "Still, I understand; and, believe me," he added in a tone of sympathy, "I feel for you, Messer Blondel. I feel deeply for you." "Feel?" the Syndic muttered.
She had taken refuge from Grio's coarseness in the farthest corner of the hearth: where stooping over a pot, she hid her burning face. Had they gone too far at last? So far, that in despair she had made up her mind to resist? Claude wondered. He hoped that they had. Basterga, too, thought it possible; but he smiled wickedly, in the pride of his resources.
He would not, he dared not see what was passing, or how they were handling her, lest the fury in his breast sweep all away, and he rise up and disobey her! When a movement told him that Basterga had released her with a last ugly taunt aimed as much at him as at her he still sat bearing it, curbing, drilling, compelling himself to be silent.
Cæsar Basterga does not forget, and his turn will come! Where is my cap?" He had let it fall on the floor, and he turned to pick it up, stooping slowly and with difficulty as stout men do. As he raised himself, his head still low, he butted it suddenly and with an activity for which no one would have given him credit full into Claude's chest.
Whether Basterga, seeing that Claude was less pliant than he had looked to find him, shunned occasion of collision with him, or the Paduan being in better spirits was less prone to fall foul of his companions, certain it is that life for a time after the outbreak at supper ran more quietly in the house in the Corraterie.
He remained, troubled at one time by the yearning to follow and comfort and cherish her; cast at another into a cold sweat by the recollection of that voice in the night, and the strange ties which bound her to Basterga. Innocent, it seemed to him, that connection could not be. Based on aught but evil it could hardly be. Yet he must endure, witness, cloak it.
He had begun to compose himself; now he had much ado not to gnash his teeth in the scholar's face. "Better?" he ejaculated bitterly. "What chance have I of being better? Better? Are you?" He began to tremble, his hands on the arms of his chair. "Otherwise, if you are not, you will soon have cause to know what I feel." "I am better," Basterga answered with fervour. "I thank Heaven for it."
It was at this moment, when the burghers had drawn back a little that they might deliver a decisive attack, that Basterga came up. Fabri the Syndic had taken the command, and had shouted to all who had windows looking on the lane to light them.
Word Of The Day