[A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac]@TWC D-Link book
A Start in Life

CHAPTER IX, LA MARQUISE DE LAS FLORENTINAS Y CABIROLOS
3/28

Above all, don't let yourself be fooled; for Derville is capable, in the interest of his clients, to stick a spoke in our wheel.

Count Felix de Vandernesse is more powerful than his brother, our client, the ambassador.

Therefore keep your eyes open, and if there's the slightest hitch come back to me at once." Oscar departed with the full intention of distinguishing himself in this little skirmish,--the first affair entrusted to him since his installation as second clerk.
After the departure of Georges and Oscar, Godeschal sounded the new clerk to discover the joke which, as he thought, lay behind this Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos.

But Frederic, with the coolness and gravity of a king's attorney, continued his cousin's hoax, and by his way of answering, and his manner generally, he succeeded in making the office believe that the marquise might really be the widow of a Spanish grandee, to whom his cousin Georges was paying his addresses.
Born in Mexico, and the daughter of Creole parents, this young and wealthy widow was noted for the easy manners and habits of the women of those climates.
"She loves to laugh, she loves to sing, she loves to drink like me!" he said in a low voice, quoting the well-known song of Beranger.

"Georges," he added, "is very rich; he has inherited from his father (who was a widower) eighteen thousand francs a year, and with the twelve thousand which an uncle has just left to each of us, he has an income of thirty thousand.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books