Cousin Betty by Honoré de Balzac
page 86 of 616 (13%)
page 86 of 616 (13%)
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This was the incident that had given rise to the coalition of female energy and masculine feebleness--a contrast in union said not to be uncommon in Poland. In 1833 Mademoiselle Fischer, who sometimes worked into the night when business was good, at about one o'clock one morning perceived a strong smell of carbonic acid gas, and heard the groans of a dying man. The fumes and the gasping came from a garret over the two rooms forming her dwelling, and she supposed that a young man who had but lately come to lodge in this attic--which had been vacant for three years --was committing suicide. She ran upstairs, broke in the door by a push with her peasant strength, and found the lodger writhing on a camp-bed in the convulsions of death. She extinguished the brazier; the door was open, the air rushed in, and the exile was saved. Then, when Lisbeth had put him to bed like a patient, and he was asleep, she could detect the motives of his suicide in the destitution of the rooms, where there was nothing whatever but a wretched table, the camp-bed, and two chairs. On the table lay a document, which she read: "I am Count Wenceslas Steinbock, born at Prelia, in Livonia. "No one is to be accused of my death; my reasons for killing myself are, in the words of Kosciusko, _Finis Polonioe_! "The grand-nephew of a valiant General under Charles XII. could not beg. My weakly constitution forbids my taking military |
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