Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Each door was kept by two of the French guard, silent and motionless as statues. The two lovers advanced, Bathilde pale and fainting, Raoul calm and smiling. On arriving before the altar, the chevalier took Bathilde's hand, and both fell on their knees, without having spoken a word.

Buvat had constantly dreamed of Bathilde's return to fortune, and to that social position of which her parents' death had deprived her, and all that brought her among the world in which she was born appeared to him a step toward this inevitable and happy result. However, the three days which he had passed without seeing her appeared to him like three centuries.

In the midst of his recital, interrupted by the exclamation of poor Madame Denis and of Mesdemoiselles Athenais and Emilie, the abbe thought that he heard a cry in the next room, just at the time when he was relating D'Harmental's catastrophe; but as no one had paid any attention to the cry, and as he was not aware of Bathilde's being there, he had attached no importance to this noise, regarding the nature of which he might easily have been mistaken; moreover, Boniface, summoned in his turn, had entered at the moment, and, as the abbe had a particular fancy for Boniface, his entrance had naturally turned Brigaud's thoughts into a different channel.

In arriving at this resolution, Buvat had reasoned, very simply, that he owed his place to Albert, and consequently, the income of that place belonged to Bathilde. This is how he divided his nine hundred livres a year: four hundred and fifty for music, drawing and dancing masters; four hundred and fifty for Bathilde's dowry.

Nanette saw that it was no use to insist, and went to her room, which was next to Bathilde's, but could not resist the impulse of curiosity, and looking through the key-hole, she saw her young mistress kneel down before her little crucifix, and then, as by a sudden impulse, run to the window, open it, and look opposite.

This unusual action on the part of the dog naturally guided Bathilde's eyes toward the cause which occasioned it. Her eyes met those of the chevalier. Bathilde blushed: the chevalier bowed; and Bathilde, without knowing what she was doing, returned the salute. Her first impulse was to go and close the window, but an instinctive feeling restrained her.

Both left at the end of a few months, disarming the regent, one by an absolute denial, the other by a complete avowal. Richelieu was arrested, as Mademoiselle de Valois had warned him, the day after that on which he had procured Bathilde's interview with the regent; but his captivity was a new triumph for him.