Modern Classics (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1865. Excerpt: ... VICTOR AND JACQUELINE. JACQUELINE GABRIE and Elsie Menl could not occupy one room, and remain, either of them, indifferent to so much as might be manifested of the other's inmost life. They could not emigrate together, peasants from Domre'my, -- Jacqueline so strong, Elsie so fair; -- could not labor in the same harvest-fields, children of old neighbors, without each being concerned in the welfare and affected by the circumstances of the other. It was near ten o'clock, one evening, when Elsie Meril ran up the common stairway, and entered the room in the fourth story where she and Jacqueline lodged. Victor Le Roy, student from Picardy, occupied the room next theirs, and was startled from his slumber by the voices of the girls. Elsie was fresh from the theatre, from the first play she had ever witnessed; she came home excited and delighted, ready to repeat and recite, as long as Jacqueline would listen. And here was Jacqueline. Earl} in the evening Elsie had sought her friend with a good deal of anxiety. A fellow-lodger and field-laborer had invited her to see the play, -- and Jacqueline was far down the street, nursing old Antonine Dupre. To seek her, thus occupied, on such an errand, Elsie had the good taste and the selfishness to refrain from doing. Therefore, after a little deliberation, she had gone to the theatre, and there forgot her hard day-labor in the wonders of the stage, -- forgot Jacqueline, and Antonine, and every care and duty. It was hard for her, when all was ended, to come back to compunction and explanation, yet to this she had come back. Neither of the girls was thinking of the student, their neighbor; but he was not only wakened by their voices, he amused himself by comparing them and their utterances with his preconceived notions of the girls. They might not hav...