Moths by Ouida — page 381: what you’re looking at

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

nd 9 ee eee MOTHS. pea 377 done, and shuddered at what might be his chastisement; but the gold had dazzled him. Hegazed after her as the sledge flew Jver the white ground against the crimson glow of the daybreak, and prayed for her to St. Nicholas. Driving on and on, never pausing save to change her horses, never stopping either to eat or rest, taking a draught of tea and an atom of bread here and there at a post-house, she at length: reached the frontiers of Kast Prussia. Correze lay on his bed in his house at Paris Crowds, from princes and senators and marshals to workmen and beggars and street Arabs, came and asked for him, and the people stood in the street without, sorrowful and anxious. For the first news . they had heard was that he would die; then they were told that the hemorrhage had ceased, that it was possible he might live, but that he would never sing again. Paris heard, and wept for its darling; wept yet more for its own lost music. The days and the weeks went on, and the first emotion and ex- citement waned with time. Then the Crown-Prince of Ger- many came into the city; there were feasts, reviews, illumina- tions. Paris, as she forgot her own wrongs, forgot her mute singer, lying in his darkened room; and the bouquets in his hall were faded and dead. No one left fresh ones. Only some score of poor people, among them a blind man and a little ugly girl, hung always, trembling and sobbing, about his doors, afraid lest their angel should unfold his wings and leave them for the skies. Correze lay in his darkness, dumb. He had been shot in the throat; he himself had fired in the air. When he had fallen, with the blood filling his mouth, he had found voice to say to his adversary, ‘‘ Your wife is faultless!” Prince Zouroff had looked down on him with a cold and fierce contentment. ‘*‘T have done you the honor to meet you, but I am not your dupe,” he had said, as he turned away; and yet in his soul he knew—knew as well as that the heavens were above him—that this man, whom he believed to be dying, spoke the truth. They had met in the garden of the house of Gorreze. They had taken only their seconds with them. It had all been arranged and over by sunrise. Sergius. Zouroff had hastened out of the - city, and over the frontier, to make his peace with his sovereign in his own country. Correze had been carried into his own house and laid in his own bed-chamber. Their friends, ac- cording to the instructions given them previously, had sent to the newspapers of the hour a story of an accident that had occurred in piaying with a pistol; although it had been soon suspected that this was but a cover to a hostile account, and rumors of the truth had soon run tliough Paris, the facts h not been known, : He lay in the gloom and silence of his chamber; Sisters of Charity were watching him: it was twilight there, though out- gide in Paris the sun was shining on multitudes of people and ed Gomicbooks (E(0)