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A short story by Artemus Ward |
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Marion: A Romance of the French School |
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Title: Marion: A Romance of the French School Author: Artemus Ward [More Titles by Ward] I. --, Friday, --, 1860. On the sad sea shore! Always to hear the moaning of these dismal waves! Listen. I will tell you my story--my story of love, of misery, of black despair. I am a moral Frenchman. She whom I adore, whom I adore still, is the wife of a fat Marquis--a lop-eared, blear-eyed, greasy Marquis. A man without soul. A man without sentiment, who cares naught for moonlight and music. A low, practical man, who pays his debts. I hate him. II. She, my soul's delight, my empress, my angel, is superbly beautiful. I loved her at first sight--devotedly, madly. She dashed past me in her coupe. I saw her but a moment--perhaps only an instant--but she took me captive then and there, forevermore. Forevermore! I followed her, after that, wherever she went. At length she came to notice, to smile upon me. My motto was en avant! That is a French word. I got it out of the back part of Worcester's Dictionary. III. She wrote me that I might come and see her at her own house. Oh, joy, joy unutterable, to see her at her own house! I went to see her after nightfall, in the soft moonlight. She came down the graveled walk to meet me, on this beautiful midsummer night--came to me in pure white, her golden hair in splendid disorder--strangely beautiful, yet in tears! She told me her fresh grievances. The Marquis, always a despot, had latterly misused her most vilely. That very morning, at breakfast, he had cursed the fishballs and sneered at the pickled onions. She is a good cook. The neighbors will tell you so. And to be told by the base Marquis--a man who, previous to his marriage, had lived at the cheap eating-houses--to be told by him that her manner of frying fishballs was a failure--it was too much. Her tears fell fast. I too wept. I mixed my sobs with her'n. "Fly with me!" I cried. Her lips met mine. I held her in my arms. I felt her breath upon my cheek! It was Hunkey. "Fly with me. To New York! I will write romances for the Sunday papers--real French romances, with morals to them. My style will be appreciated. Shop girls and young mercantile persons will adore it, and I will amass wealth with my ready pen." Ere she could reply--ere she could articulate her ecstasy, her husband, the Marquis, crept snake-like upon me. Shall I write it? He kicked me out of the garden--he kicked me into the street. I did not return. How could I? I, so ethereal, so full of soul, of sentiment, of sparkling originality! He, so gross, so practical, so lop-eared! Had I returned, the creature would have kicked me again. So I left Paris for this place--this place, so lonely, so dismal. Ah me! Oh dear! -THE END- GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |