Mysteries of Paris, V3 by Eugène Sue
page 29 of 592 (04%)
page 29 of 592 (04%)
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She was once the slave of a Louisiana planter, who designed her for his
harem. Her lover, a slave named David, resisted that design to the only gain of being flogged, while his loved one was borne away. David was no common black; he had been educated in France, and was the plantation surgeon. The story of this high-handed and twofold outrage reached Rudolph, whose yacht was on the coast. The prince, landing in the night with a boat's crew, carried off David and Cecily from the planter's calaboose, leaving a sum of money as indemnity. The two were wedded in France, but Cecily, won away by a very bad man, had become so evil, that her new life was a series of scandals. David would have killed her, but Rudolph, whose physician he had worthily become, induced him to prefer her life-prisonment in Germany. Out of her dungeon she was brought by Rudolph, who knew no fitter implement with which to chastise the notary. Her detestable predilections, for some time restrained by her real attachment for David, were only developed in Europe; the civilization and climatical influence of the North had tempered the violence, modified the expression. Instead of casting herself violently on her prey, and thinking only, like her compeers, to destroy as soon as possible their life and fortune, Cecily, fixing on her victims her magnetic glances, commenced by attracting them, little by little, into the blazing whirlwind which seemed to emanate from her; then, seeing them lost, suffering every torment of a tantalized craving, she amused herself by a refinement of coquetry, prolonging their delirium; then, returning to her first instincts, she destroyed them in her homicidal embrace. This was more horrible still. The famished tiger, who springs upon and carries off the prey which he tears with wild roars, inspires less horror than the serpent, which silently charms, attracts by degrees, twists in inextricable folds the victim, feels it palpitate under its deadly stings, and seems to feed upon |
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