ᐸ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?ᐳ
ᐸsamples n="ENG18830"ᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG188301600"ᐳTime went by; the chimes from the cathedral tolled dully through the darkness, over the expanse of the flood.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188301601"ᐳThe light from the burning wood shone redly and fitfully. The sigh and moan of the tossed rushes, and of the water birds, awakened and afraid, came from the outer world on the winds that blew through the desolation of the haunted chamber. Grey owls flew in the high roof, taking refuge from the night. Rats hurried noiseless and eager over the stones of the floor, seeking stray grains that fell through the rafters from the granaries above.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188301602"ᐳShe noticed none of these things; she never looked up nor around: all she heard was the throb of the delirious words on the silence, all she saw was the human face in the clouded light through the smoke from the flame.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188301603"ᐳThe glow of the fire shone on the bowed head of Thanatos, the laughing eyes of Pan, Hermes’ fair cold derisive face, and the majesty of the Lykegênês toiling in the ropes that bound him to the mill‐stones to grind bread, for the mortal appetites and the ineloquent lips of men.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188301604"ᐳBut at the gods she barely looked; her eyes were bent upon the human form beside her.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188301605"ᐳShe crouched beside him, half kneeling and half sitting: her clothes were drenched, the fire scorched, the draughts of air froze, her; she had neither eaten nor drunk since the noon of the day; but she had no other remembrance than of this life which had the beauty of the sun‐king and the misery of the beggar.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188301606"ᐳHe lay long, restless, unconscious, muttering strange sad words, at times of sense, at times of folly, but always, whether lucid or delirious, words of rebellion against his fate, of a despairing lament for the soul in him that would be with the body quenched.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188301607"ᐳAfter awhile the feverish mutterings of his voice grew lower and less frequent; his eyes seemed to become sensible of the glare of the fire, and to contract and close in a more conscious pain; after a yet longer time he ceased to stir so restlessly, ceased to sigh and shudder; he grew quite still, his breath came tranquilly, his head fell back, and he sank to a deep sleep.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188301608"ᐳThe personal fears, the womanly terrors, which would have assailed creatures at once less savage and less innocent never moved her for an instant. That there was any strangeness in her action, any peril in this solitude, she never dreamed. Her heart, bold with the blood of Taric, could know no physical fear; and her mind at once ignorant and visionary, her temper at once fierce and unselfish, kept from her all thought of those suspicions, which would fall on and chastise an act like hers; suspicions, such as would have made women less pure and less dauntless tremble at that lonely house, that night of storm, that unknown fate which she had taken into her own hands, unwitting and unheeding whether good or evil might be the issue thereof.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG188308"ᐳThe dust was carried away by the breeze, and wandered wherever it listed. The dust had a sweet short summer‐day life of its own ere it died. If it were worthless, it at least was free. It could lie in the curl of a green leaf, or on the white breast of a flower. It could mingle with the golden dust in a lily, and almost seem to be one with it. It could fly with the thistledown, and with the feathers of the dandelion, on every roving wind that blew.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188309"ᐳIn a vague, dreamy fashion, the child wondered why the dust was so much better dealt with than she was.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1883010"ᐳ“Folle‐Farine! Folle—Folle—Folle—Farine!” the other children hooted after her, echoing the name by which the grim humour of her bitter‐tongued taskmaster had called her. She had got used to it, and answered to it as others to their birth‐names.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1883011"ᐳIt meant that she was a thing utterly useless, absolutely worthless; the very refuse of the winnowings of the flail of fate. But she accepted that too, so far as she understood it; she only sometimes wondered in a dull fierce fashion why, if she and the dust were sisters, the dust had its wings whilst she had none.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1883012"ᐳAll day long the dust flew in and out and about as it liked, through the open doors, and among the tossing boughs, and through the fresh cool mists, and down the golden shafts of the sunbeams; and all day long she stayed in one place and toiled, and was first beaten and then cursed, or first cursed and then beaten,—which was all the change that her life knew. For herself, she saw no likeness betwixt her and the dust; for that escaped from the scourge and flew forth, but she abode under the flail always.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1883013"ᐳNevertheless, Folle‐Farine was all the name she knew.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1883014"ᐳThe great black wheel churned and circled in the brook water, and lichens and ferns and mosses made lovely all the dark, shadowy, silent place; the red mill roof gleamed in the sun, under a million summer leaves; the pigeons came and went all day in and out of their holes in the wall; the sweet scents of ripening fruits in many orchards filled the air; the great grindstones turned and turned and turned, and the dust floated forth to dance with the gnat and to play with the sunbeam.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG188301918"ᐳIn this mute young lonely soul of hers Nature had sown a strong passion for justice, a strong instinct towards what was righteous. As the germ of a plant born in darkness underground will, by sheer instinct, uncurl its colourless tendrils, and thrust them through crevices and dust, and the close structure of mortared stones, until they reach the light and grow green and strong in it, so did her nature strive, of its own accord, through the gloom enveloping it, towards those moral laws which in all ages and all lands remain the same, no matter what deity be worshipped, or what creed be called the truth.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188301919"ᐳHe nascent mind was darkened, oppressed, bewildered, perplexed, even like the plant which, forcing itself upward from its cellar, opens it leaves not in pure air and under a blue sky, but in the reek and smoke and fœtid odours of a city. Yet, like the plant, she vaguely felt that light was somewhere; and as vaguely sought it.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188301920"ᐳWith most days she took her grandsire’s boat to and fro the town, fetching or carrying; there was no mode of transit so cheap to him as this, whose only cost was her fatigue. With each passage up and down the river, she passed by the dwelling of Arslàn.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188301921"ᐳSometimes she saw him; once or twice, in the twilight, he spoke to her; she only bent her head to hide her face from him, and rowed more quickly on her homeward way in silence. At other times, in his absence, and when she was safe from any detection, she entered the dismal solitudes where he laboured, and gazed in rapt and awed amazement at the shapes that were shadowed forth upon the walls.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188301922"ᐳThe service by which he gained his daily bread was on the waters, and took him often leagues away—simple hardy toil, amongst fishers and canal‐carriers and bargemen. But it left him some few days, and all his nights, free for art; and never in all the years of his leisure had his fancy conceived and his hand created more exquisite dreams and more splendid phantasies than now in this bitter and cheerless time, when he laboured amidst the poorest for the bare bread of life.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188301923"ᐳ“De belles choses peuvent se faire dans une cave;” and in truth the gloom of the cellar gives birth to an art more sublime than the light of the palace can ever beget.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG188303494"ᐳThe broad flat‐bottomed boats were coming in at sunrise, in each some cargo of green food or of farm produce: a strong girl rowing with bare arms, and the sun catching the white glint of her head‐gear. Boys with coils of spotted birds’ eggs, children with lapsful of wood‐gathered primroses, old women nursing a wicker cage of cackling hens or hissing geese, mules and asses, shaking their bells and worsted tassels, bearing their riders high on sheepskin saddles,—these all went by her on the river, or on the towing‐path, or on the broad high road that ran for a space by the water’s edge.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188303495"ᐳAll of these knew her well; all of these sometime of another had jeered her, jostled her, flouted her, or fled from her. But no one stopped her. No one cared enough for her to care even to wonder where she went.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188303496"ᐳShe glided out of the town, and along the banks she knew so well, and passed the wood and the orchards of Yprès. But what at another time would have had pain for her, and held her with the bonds of a sad familiarity, now scarcely moved her. One great grief and one great passion had drowned all these lesser woes, and scorched to ashes all slighter memories.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188303497"ᐳAll day long they sailed.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188303498"ᐳAt noon the old man gave her a little fruit and a crust as part of her wage; she tried to eat them, knowing she would want all her strength.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188303499"ᐳThey left the course of the stream that she knew, and sailed further than she had ever sailed; passed towns whose bells were ringing, and noble bridges gleaming in the sun, and water‐mills black and gruesome, and bright orchards and vineyards heavy with the promise of fruit. She knew none of them. There were only the water flowing under the keel, and the blue sky above, with the rooks circling in it, which had the look of friends to her.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188303500"ᐳThe twilight fell; still the wind served, and still they held on; the mists came, white and thick, and stars rose, and the voices from the shores sounded strangely, with here and there a note of music or the deep roll of a drum.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188303501"ᐳSo she drifted out of the old life into an unknown world. But she never once looked back. Why should she?—He had gone before.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188303502"ᐳWhen it was quite night, they drew near to a busy town, whose lights glittered by hundreds and thousands on the bank. There were many barges and small boats at anchor in its wharves, hanging out lanterns at their mast‐heads.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG1883087"ᐳIt was but a great goshawk seeking for its prey; it was but a great meteor fading and falling at its due appointed hour; but to the heated, savage, dreamy fancy of the child it seemed an omen, an answer, a thing of prophecy, a spirit of air; nay, why not Him himself?ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1883088"ᐳIn legends, which had been the only lore her ears had ever heard, it had been often told he took such shapes as this.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1883089"ᐳ“If he should give me his kingdom!” she thought; and her eyes flashed alight; her heart swelled; her cheeks burned. The little dim untutored brain could not hold the thought long or close enough to grasp, or sift, of measure it; but some rude rich glory, impalpable, unutterable, seemed to come to her and bathe her in its heat and colour. She was his offspring, so they all told her; why not, then, also his heir?ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1883090"ᐳShe felt, as felt the goatherd or the charcoal‐burner in those legends she had fed on, who was suddenly called from poverty and toil, from hunger and fatigue, from a fireless hearth, and a bed of leaves, to inherit some fairy empire, to ascend to some region of the gods.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1883091"ᐳLike one of these, hearing the summons to some great unknown imperial power smite all his poor pale barren life to splendour, so Folle‐Farine, standing by the water’s side in the light of the moon, desolate, ignorant, brute‐like, felt elected to some mighty heritage unseen of men. If this were waiting for her in the future, what matter, now, were stripes or wounds or woe?ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1883092"ᐳShe smiled a little, dreamily, like one who beholds fair visions in his sleep, and stole back over the starlit grass, and swung herself upward by the tendrils of ivy, and crouched once more down in her nest of mosses.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1883093"ᐳAnd either the courage of the spirits of darkness, or the influence of instincts dumb but nascent, was with her; for she fell asleep in her little loft in the roof as though she were a thing cherished of heaven and earth, and dreamed happily all through the hours of the slowly‐rising dawn: her bruised body and her languid brain and her aching heart all stilled and soothed, and her hunger and passion and pain forgotten; with the night‐blooming flowers still clasped in her hands, and on her closed mouth a smile.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳᐸ/samplesᐳ