United States or Senegal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Thither we escorted her niece; and M. l'Abbé Coignard, who had quite a venerable look, though one shoe was unbuckled, accompanied the fair Sophie to the door of her aunt's lodging and pitched that lady a fine tale: "I had the happy fortune," he informed her, "to encounter your good niece at the very moment when she was assailed by four footpads armed with pistols, and I shouted for the watch so lustily that the thieves took to their heels in a panic.
"I never had a letter from Comte Chabert; and if some one is pretending to be the Colonel, it is some swindler, some returned convict, like Coignard perhaps. It makes me shudder only to think of it. Can the Colonel rise from the dead, monsieur?
Claire, is told by the abbé Jérôme Coignard on the edge of Santa Clara’s well at Siena. This story shows reminiscences of Le Sage’s Le Diable boiteux. It will be recalled that Asmodeus also lifts the roofs of the houses of Madrid and exhibits their interior to his benefactor.
She accused you and the Abbe Coignard of being M. d'Anquetil's accomplices, and gave a faithful account of all the murder and bloodshed perpetrated in the course of that terrible night. Alas! her truthfulness was of no use; she was carried to the spittel. It's downright horrible to think of it."
"Monsieur le Cure," I said, "the Abbe Coignard, my good master, does not wander in his mind, and it is but too true that he has been murdered by a Jew of the name of Mosaide." "In that case," replied the vicar, "he has to see a special favour of God, who willed that he perishes by the hand of a nephew of those who crucified His Son. The behaviour of Providence is always admirable.
"Your lordship may not be aware that it was quite new," was the postboy's meek reply. "And the window glasses are broken!" sighed Jahel, seated on a portmanteau, at the side of the road. "If it were but the glasses," said M. Coignard, "a remedy could soon be found by lowering the blinds, but the bottles cannot be in the same state as the windows.
But M. Coignard, having put on his barnacles and placed the book at the necessary distance, began to read the characters easily; they looked more like balls of thread that had been unrolled by a kitten than the simple and quiet letters of my St John Chrysostom, out of which I studied the language of Plato and the New Testament.
"I have heard from a supernatural voice, and also from Criton's reports, of the sacrilegious larceny M. Coignard committed by which he flattered himself to find out the art by which Salamanders, Sylphs, and Gnomes ripen the morning dew and insensibly change it into crystals and diamonds."
I was still not enough of a philosopher to be desirous of becoming happy by such means. Possibly, I said to myself, such vapours predispose to madness; and finally I became defiant enough to think of going to the library to ask advice of M. Jerome Coignard.
On the contrary, he congratulated M. Jerome Coignard on his zeal and knowledge, and further said that he relied on his enlightenment for the achievement of the greatest work that man had ever attempted. And turning to me he said: "Be so good as to come for a moment to my study, where I intend to make known to you a secret of consequence."
Word Of The Day