Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/312

 Upon entering she saw a letter slipped under the door of the brick-tiled corridor leading from the road into the yard; she picked it up, and read it, impelled by the desire to find some explanation within. The least sensitive of beings can imagine what she must have felt upon reading these awful lines:

“Make up your mind to become my wife, rich and adored. I want you. If I do not have you alive I will have you dead. To your refusal you may attribute the misfortunes which will overtake none but yourself.



Strange! at the very moment that the gentle, tender victim of this plot was crushed like a broken flower, Mesdemoiselles Massin, Dionis and Crémière were envying her lot.

“She is very lucky,” they were saying. “Everyone is thinking about her, her fancies are flattered, and she is being discussed! From what they say the serenade must have been charming! There was a cornopean!”

“What is a cornopean?”

“A new instrument! look here, as big as this,” said Angeline Crémière to Paméla Massin.

In the morning Savinien had gone as far as Fontainebleau trying to find out who had asked for the bandsmen from the regiment in garrison; but, as there were two men to each instrument, it was impossible to recognize those who had gone to Nemours. The colonel gave orders forbidding the