Fromont and Risler — Volume 1 by Alphonse Daudet
page 56 of 87 (64%)
page 56 of 87 (64%)
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ornament. The mother and daughter were hemming pink flounces destined
for Sidonie's frock, and the little cripple never had plied her needle with such good heart. In truth little Desiree was not Delobelle's daughter to no purpose. She inherited her father's faculty of retaining his illusions, of hoping on to the end and even beyond. While Frantz was dilating upon his woe, Desire was thinking that, when Sidonie was gone, he would come every day, if it were only to talk about the absent one; that she would have him there by her side, that they would sit up together waiting for "father," and that, perhaps, some evening, as he sat looking at her, he would discover the difference between the woman who loves you and the one who simply allows herself to be loved. Thereupon the thought that every stitch taken in the frock tended to hasten the departure which she anticipated with such impatience imparted. extraordinary activity to her needle, and the unhappy lover ruefully watched the flounces and ruffles piling up about her, like little pink, white-capped waves. When the pink frock was finished, Mademoiselle Chebe started for Savigny. The chateau of M. Gardinois was built in the valley of the Orge, on the bank of that capriciously lovely stream, with its windmills, its little islands, its dams, and its broad lawns that end at its shores. The chateau, an old Louis-Quinze structure, low in reality, although made |
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