Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 292: what you’re looking at

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

284 _ HER ROYAL LOVER. The morning passed slowly to the desires of the unhappy woman. Monsieur Klug had received at eight o’clock in the morning the letter of his illus- trious client; he set out immediately by a diligence which brought him at five o’clock in the evening be- fore the somber cloister of Sainte-Marie de la Misericorde. When the advocate set his foot upon the ground before the massive doors of the gloomy edifice the sun still in all its strength was brilliantly lighting it and making all the front windows sparkle gayly with a thousand diverse fires. The aspect of this asylum of oblivion and of peace was less dismal, less sinister, than when Najeska Ivanowna, forty- eight hours before, had entered it for the first time in a dark and tempestuous night. The painted statues of the bleeding Christ which, at every twenty paces, were elevated in the rugged moun- tains, appeared themselves less sad, less frightful in this desert landscape which they decorated with their sublime and imposing figures; for in this Catholic country adjacent to Thessaly, as in Italy, everywhere may be seen on the exterior of villages and of houses, frescoes and paintings. Every. where, also, painted statues in stucco of the Virgin and of our Lord. Najeska Ivanowna introduced Monsieur Klug in her apartment. The interview which she had with him was long. “The first step to take,” said Monsieur Klug, “i since the marriage has been kept secret from verte body, to publish the news in the official gazette, the ministerial organ of the king. They cannot refuse this insertion, since the king has himself signed the marriage register and that, orth a al there. exists Gomicbooks: com