Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Cousin Betty by Honoré de Balzac
page 110 of 616 (17%)
But, come, madame, hope for the best. The State must do something for
the daughter of one of the Chevalier Bayards of the Empire."

Madame Marneffe bowed gracefully and went off, as proud of her success
as the Baron was of his.

"Where the devil has she been so early?" thought he watching the flow
of her skirts, to which she contrived to impart a somewhat exaggerated
grace. "She looks too tired to have just come from a bath, and her
husband is waiting for her. It is strange, and puzzles me altogether."

Madame Marneffe having vanished within, the Baron wondered what his
daughter was doing in the shop. As he went in, still staring at Madame
Marneffe's windows, he ran against a young man with a pale brow and
sparkling gray eyes, wearing a summer coat of black merino, coarse
drill trousers, and tan shoes, with gaiters, rushing away headlong; he
saw him run to the house in the Rue du Doyenne, into which he went.

Hortense, on going into the shop, had at once recognized the famous
group, conspicuously placed on a table in the middle and in front of
the door. Even without the circumstances to which she owed her
knowledge of this masterpiece, it would probably have struck her by
the peculiar power which we must call the _brio_--the _go_--of great
works; and the girl herself might in Italy have been taken as a model
for the personification of _Brio_.

Not every work by a man of genius has in the same degree that
brilliancy, that glory which is at once patent even to the most
ignoble beholder. Thus, certain pictures by Raphael, such as the
famous _Transfiguration_, the _Madonna di Foligno_, and the frescoes
DigitalOcean Referral Badge