Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/263

Rh asleep; what is certain is that when she awakened, her ideas were as confused as the evening before, and she was as far as ever from forming a resolution.

As she was at breakfast—for one always breakfasts, madam, especially when one has dined poorly—she read in the paper that—I know not what—Pacha had sacked a city in Roumelia. Women and children had been massacred; many Philhellenes had perished arms in hand, or had been slowly put to death by horrible tortures. That newspaper article was little calculated to give Madame de Piennes a taste for the journey to Greece for which Max was preparing himself. She was meditating sadly over what she was reading, when a servant handed her a note from him. The evening before he had been greatly bored at Madame Darsenay's; and, disquieted not to have found Madame de Piennes there, he wrote her for news of herself, and to ask at what hour she was going to see Arsène Guillot. Madame de Piennes had not the courage to write, and sent word that she would go at the accustomed hour. Then the idea came to her to go at once, in order to avoid meeting Max; but, upon reflection, she decided that that was a childish and shameful falsehood, worse than her weakness of yesterday. She therefore forti-