Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 245: what you’re looking at

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

HER ROYAL I.0 VER, | 237 Suddenly, the large folding-doors in the middle open, and a Swiss strikes the sonorous pavement three times; and in a stentorian voice announces: “The king!” Charles Ferdinand XVIII appears. With his left hand he guides the steps of the august fiancee who, too majestic and not affected enough, disappeared under a long and vaporous white vail; her gown is of cloth of silver, the heaviness and the length of the train is such that two pages who strive to recal. their predecessors of the seventeenth and eight- eenth centuries, are obliged to support it; they seemed crushed by it; the crown of orange-blos- soms, the inseparable accompaniment of this day, often very wrongly termed a day of happiness, sparkles all studded with diamonds which, in all this iinmaculate whiteness glitter from all their lu- minous facets. Behind, comes the fiance and hig parents. | Several minutes elapse; the Swiss’ halberd is heard a second time, and a respectful silence is es- tablished. Then, solemnly in her morning garb, ad- vances slowly, gravely, as all the dignity of so high a personage requires, the august, the illustrious Km- press of Hindostan. Even on this day all festivity and joy, she had not wished to forsake this livery of grief with which her soul is filled since the death of her imperial husband; in this black toilet the vail and crown alone are white; it is almost a lugubri- ous contrast, which very fortunately comes to en- liven a diadem of an unheard of splendor and rich- ness. Near the empress, on her right, was the stout and heavy Princess Corysande, whose features are the ; exact counterpart of her mother, with the exception Eomicbooks:.com