nephew to his chamber there!And burn Monsieur my nephew in
his bed, if you will,” he added to himself, before he rang his little
bell again, and summoned his valet to his own bedroom.
The valet come and gone, Monsieur the Marquis walked to and
fro in his loose chamber-robe, to prepare himself gently for sleep,
that hot still night. Rustling about the room, his softly-slippered
feet making no noise on the floor, he moved like a refined tiger:
looked like some enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked
sort, in story, whose periodical change into tiger form was either
just going off, or just coming on.
He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bed room, looking
again at the scraps of the day’s journey that came unbidden into
his mind; the slow toil up the hill at sunset, the setting sun, the
descent, the mill, the prison on the crag, the little village in the
hollow, the peasants at the fountain, and the mender of roads with
his blue cap pointing out the chain under the carriage. That
fountain suggested the Paris fountain, the little bundle lying on
the step, the woman bending over it, and the tall man with his
arms up, crying, “Dead!”
“I am cool now,” said Monsieur the Marquis, “and may go to
bed.”
So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, he let his
thin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night break its
silence with a long sigh as he composed himself to sleep.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black
night for three heavy hours; for three heavy hours, the horses in
the stables rattled at their rac