Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 279: what you’re looking at

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

HER ROYAL LOVER. 271 and his country, was herself a Catholic; it was then to the convent of the Sisters of Sainte-Marie de la Misericorde, a vast and gloomy cloister, that she was going to live at present, endeavoring in this quiet retreat to forget, if not to pardon. In broad daylight an excursion through these mountains was a difficult thing; but, in the ob- scurity of the night this journey became almost im- practicable. The order was explicit, however, and the detachment of police which, according to the wishes of the empress, surrounded the carriage of the fugitive, had received instructions not to inter- rupt the journey, under any pretext whatever, until the exile was out of the Thessalian dominions. As it often happéns in this life, when misfortune has entered a door it does not seem likely to leave it; it was to be thus for Najeska Ivanowna, who, as well through the road she was traveling as through her companion, had yet many annoyances to endure during this painful ascension. The frightful tempest of the day had occasioned very great devastation, whose wrecks, scattered here and there, obstructed the road and made this sad journey longer and more fatiguing. On all sides there were nothing but enormous blocks of stone, entire trees uprooted by the fury of the storm, telegraph poles lying upon the earth soaked by the morning rain, and fallen rocks which it was neces- sary to remove one by one in order to be able to con- tinue their journey. The maid, a superstitious peasant, with her head crammed with mysterious apparitions of the devil and of saints, was becoming one torture more for the poor afflicted creature. It was necessary for her, she whose courage was so tried, to raise that of a Ecomichbooks.com