'Held in Bondage'; Or, Granville de Vigne, by Ouida - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1863 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI. THE WIPE TO WHOM SABRETASCHE WAS BOUND. The first chesnut-leaves of the Tuileries were silvered in the moonlight, and the dark Seine wound under the gloomy bridges of the old town out under the wooded heights of St. Germain, where the oaks that had listened to the love of Louise de la Valliere, were thrusting out their earliest spring-buds. It was night, and the deep calm heavens bent above, as if in tenderness for the fair white City that lay in the valley of the Seine, like one of the gleaming lilies of its own exiled Bourbons. Around it, in the grand old chase of St. Cloud, in the forest aisles of Fontainebleau, among the silent terraces of Versailles and Neuilly, the night was calm, still, hushed to holy silence; whilst in the City of pleasures, of blood, of mirth, of death, of wit, of strife, in the City of Mirabeau and Andre Chenier, of Rivarol and St. Just, of Marie Antoinette and Theroigne de Mericourt, the night was full of jests, and laughter, as the gas-flowers of Mabille were lit, and the Imperial household thronged the palace of the Bourbons, and the crowds filled the Boulevards and the Cafes Chantants; the Chaumiere and the Chateau des Fleurs, for Paris was awake, crowned with flowers, with laughter on her lips and sparkling in her eyes, gay as a young girl at her first ball--gay as she has ever been, even on the eve of her darkest tragedies, her most terrible hours. The soft spring night came down on Paris. Before the cheval-glass in her luxurious bedchamber, with jewels on her hair and in her bosom, stood the belle of its most aristocratic reunions, shuddering, even while her maid clasped the pearls upon her arm for a ball at Madame de La Vieillecour's, at the memory of those words from her brother's lips, which bade her choose ...