Belle-Rose — page 36: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A STEP IN LIFE. 25 roof. Let us embrace each other now, and may God guide ou.’’ : Jacques first embraced Guillaume and Pierre. Claudine had remained slightly in the rear; when it was her turn, she threw herself on Jacques’ neck. “‘T embrace you for myself first,’’ she whispered to him, so low that her voice glided like a breath into the tray- eler’s ear; ‘‘afterward for her.’’ Jacques trembled. : ‘‘Yes, for her,’’ his sister resumed; ‘‘she herself has recommended me to do so.’’ Jacques passionately pressed Claudine to his heart at the recollection of Suzanne. He looked atthe sky full of new courage, his eye shining with hope. The first rays of dawn lit up the dewy plains. On the horizon floated a thousand gilded vapors, and the road was lost in the midst of solitudes bathed in light. Paris was yonder, behind that flaming horizon; Suzanne was the reward of triumph. Jacques snatched himself from Clau- dine’s arms and took his departure. \ : ee) Se tn ee CHAPTER III. A STEP IN LIFE. At some hundred steps from the cottage, the road made a turn and led up a small hill. Arrived at the top, Jacques turned back. -Upon the threshold of the door, Guillaume Grinedal was standing, and near him, kneeling upon the eround, Pierre and Claudine holding his hands in theirs. Behind him Jacques left all his happiness, all that he had loved—the garden filled with shade and delightfully cool, the tranquil retreat where he had stammered his first _ prayer and dreamed his first dreams of love, the great ‘plains which had protected his soul with their solitude and their serenity, the vast chateau, vailed by old elms, - where he had so often sighed, without knowing the cause of his sighs, at the noise of two infantile lips singing a song of the country. The tawny oxen wandering over the fertile meadows, the bulls ruminating in the shade of the beech trees, the herd filing along the path, the black swarms of crows dispersed about the oaks, the young girl passing the: babbling brook with bare feet, the stupid farmer urging on his loitering team, and even the larks Eomicbooks (E(0)