What Pierre Did with His Soul (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890. Excerpt: ... THE passion that Clemence inspired in Jacques was the stronger that it had been resisted. A caprice had thrown the young woman and the handsome young man together, and they loved each other with an exclusiveness that placed an insurmountable barrier between them and the rest of the world. For two weeks they lived only for each other in the pretty villa on the Mentone road, either under the 149 flowering orange trees of the garden, or among the low luxurious divans of the Moorish drawing-room. At evening, not without great difficulty, Jacques would tear himself from the beguilements of his charmer and return to Beaulieu. His mother.and sister only saw him for a moment, before his departure in the morning, and it caused Mme. de Vignes a feeling of deep sadness to see that the unhoped-for restoration of her son's health had been to him only a signal for resuming his former dissipated way of living, that consuming life that had brought him so near his end. She had ventured upon a remonstrance, which had been answered with a smile. Jacques, in a hurry to be off, had kissed his mother, assured her that he had never felt stronger, which was the truth, and that there was no cause for uneasiness, and then, unwilling to listen further to advice or entreaties, -he had made his way to the station and taken the Monte Carlo train. So the two women remained alone, and their days were passed in silence and in gloom, while at the villa Jacques was enjoying the wasting pleasures that had destroyed Pierre Laurier's talent, debased his character, ruined his courage and transformed the famous artist into a wreck who had sought forgetfulness of his brilliant past in death. Clemence, all the more dangerous because she was now sincere, loved as she believed that she had never lov...