文档介绍：VENDETTA
VENDETTA
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley
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VENDETTA
DEDICATION
To Puttinati, Milanese Sculptor.
2
VENDETTA
CHAPTER I
PROLOGUE
In the year 1800, toward the close of October, a foreigner,
panied by a woman and a little girl, was standing for a long time in
front of the palace of the Tuileries, near the ruins of a house recently
pulled down, at the point where in our day the wing begins which was
intended to unite the chateau of Catherine de Medici with the Louvre of
the Valois.
The man stood there with folded arms and a bowed head, which he
sometimes raised to look alternately at the consular palace and at his wife,
who was sitting near him on a stone. Though the woman seemed wholly
occupied with the little girl of nine or ten years of age, whose long black
hair she amused herself by handling, she lost not a single glance of those
panion cast on her. Some sentiment other than love united these
two beings, and inspired with mutual anxiety their movements and their
thoughts. Misery is, perhaps, the most powerful of all ties.
The stranger had one of those broad, serious heads, covered with thick
hair, which we see so frequently in the pictures of the i. The jet
black of the hair was streaked with white. Though noble and proud, his
features had a hardness which spoiled them. In spite of his evident
strength, and his straight, erect figure, he looked to be over sixty years of
age. His dilapidated clothes were those of a foreign country. Though the
faded and once beautiful face of the wife betrayed the deepest sadness, she
forced herself to smile, assuming a calm countenance whenever her
husband looked at her.
The little girl was standing, though signs of weariness were on the
youthful face, which was tanned by the sun. She had an Italian cast of
countenance and bearing, large black eyes beneath their well arched brows,
a native nobleness, and candid grace. More than one of those who passed