Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
of the gallows that would turn to water and quench it, no
functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to calculate
successfully.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
Chapter XXX
DRAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROCK
n such risings of fire and risings of seathe firm earth shaken
by the rushes of an angry ocean which had now no ebb, but
was always on the flow, higher and higher, to the terror and
wonder of the beholders on the shorethree years of tempest
were consumed. Three more birthdays of little Lucie had been
woven by the golden thread into the peaceful tissue of the life of
her home.
Many a night and many a day had its inmates listened to the
echoes in the corner, with hearts that failed them when they heard
the thronging feet. For, the footsteps had become to their minds as
the footsteps of a people, tumultuous under a red flag and with
their country declared in danger, changed into wild beasts, by
terrible enchantment long persisted in.
Monseigneur, as a class, had dissociated himself from the
phenomenon of his not being appreciated: of his being so little
wanted in France, as to incur considerable danger of receiving his
dismissal from it, and this life together. Like the fabled rustic who
raised the Devil with infinite pains, and was so terrified at the
sight of him that he could ask the Enemy no question, but
immediately fled; so, Monseigneur, after boldly reading the Lord’s
Prayer backwards for a great number of years, and performing
many other potent spells for compelling the Evil One, no sooner
beheld him in his terrors than