Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Companions of Jehu by Alexandre Dumas (best ereader for comics TXT) 📖
- Author: Alexandre Dumas
Book online «The Companions of Jehu by Alexandre Dumas (best ereader for comics TXT) 📖». Author Alexandre Dumas
“Oh, be easy about that. You will go armed, won’t you?”
“If I thought I was only dealing with ghosts, I’d go with my hands in my pockets and nothing in my fobs. But, as I told you, M. de Turenne’s ghosts were counterfeiters, so I shall take my pistols.”
“Do you want mine?”
“No, thanks. Though yours are good, I am about resolved never to use them again.” Then, with a smile whose bitterness it would be impossible to describe, he added: “They brought me ill-luck. Good-night! Sir John. I must sleep soundly to-night, so as not to want to sleep to-morrow night.”
Then, shaking the Englishman’s hand vigorously a second time, he left the room and returned to his own. There he was greatly surprised to find the door, which he was sure he had left closed, open. But as soon as he entered, the sight of his sister explained the matter to him.
“Hello!” he exclaimed, partly astonished, partly uneasy; “is that you, Amélie?”
“Yes, it is I,” she said. Then, going close to her brother, and letting him kiss her forehead, she added in a supplicating voice: “You won’t go, will you, dear Roland?”
“Go where?” asked Roland.
“To the Chartreuse.”
“Good! Who told you that?”
“Oh! for one who knows, how difficult it is to guess!”
“And why don’t you want me to go to the Chartreuse?”
“I’m afraid something might happen to you.”
“What! So you believe in ghosts, do you?” he asked, looking fixedly into Amélie’s eyes.
Amélie lowered her glance, and Roland felt his sister’s hand tremble in his.
“Come,” said Roland; “Amélie, at least the one I used to know, General de Montrevel’s daughter and Roland’s sister, is too intelligent to yield to these vulgar terrors. It’s impossible that you can believe these tales of apparitions, chains, flames, spectres, and phantoms.”
“If I did believe them, Roland, I should not be so alarmed. If ghosts do exist, they must be souls without bodies, and consequently cannot bring their material hatred from the grave. Besides, why should a ghost hate you, Roland; you, who never harmed any one?”
“Good! You forget all those I have killed in war or in duels.”
Amélie shook her head. “I’m not afraid of them.”
“Then what are you afraid of?”
The young girl raised her beautiful eyes, wet with tears, to Roland, and threw herself in his arms, saying: “I don’t know, Roland. But I can’t help it, I am afraid.”
The young man raised her head, which she was hiding in his breast, with gentle force, and said, kissing her eyelids softly and tenderly: “You don’t believe I shall have ghosts to fight with to-morrow, do you?”
“Oh, brother, don’t go to the Chartreuse!” cried Amélie, eluding the question.
“Mother told you to say this to me, didn’t she?”
“Oh, no, brother! Mother said nothing to me. It is I who guessed that you intended to go.”
“Well, if I want to go,” replied Roland firmly, “you ought to know, Amélie, that I shall go.”
“Even if I beseech you on my knees, brother?” cried Amélie in a tone of anguish, slipping down to her brother’s feet; “even if I beseech you on my knees?”
“Oh! women! women!” murmured Roland, “inexplicable creatures, whose words are all mystery, whose lips never tell the real secrets of their hearts, who weep, and pray, and tremble—why? God knows, but man, never! I shall go, Amélie, because I have resolved to go; and when once I have taken a resolution no power on earth can make me change it. Now kiss me and don’t be frightened, and I will tell you a secret.”
Amélie raised her head, and gazed questioningly, despairingly, at Roland.
“I have known for more than a year,” replied the young man, “that I have the misfortune not to be able to die. So reassure yourself, and don’t be afraid.”
Roland uttered these words so dolefully that Amélie, who had, until then, kept her emotion under control, left the room sobbing.
The young officer, after assuring himself that her door was closed, shut his, murmuring: “We’ll see who will weary first, Fate or I.”
CHAPTER XVI. THE GHOST
The next evening, at about the same hour, the young officer, after convincing himself that every one in the Château des Noires-Fontaines had gone to bed, opened his door softly, went downstairs holding his breath, reached the vestibule, slid back the bolts of the outer door noiselessly, and turned round to make sure that all was quiet. Reassured by the darkened windows, he boldly opened the iron gate. The hinges had probably been oiled that day, for they turned without grating, and closed as noiselessly as they had opened behind Roland, who walked rapidly in the direction of Pont d’Ain at Bourg.
He had hardly gone a hundred yards before the clock at Saint-Just struck once; that of Montagnac answered like a bronze echo. It was half-past ten o’clock. At the pace the young man was walking he needed only twenty minutes to reach the Chartreuse; especially if, instead of skirting the woods, he took the path that led direct to the monastery. Roland was too familiar from youth with every nook of the forest of Seillon to needlessly lengthen his walk ten minutes. He therefore turned unhesitatingly into the forest, coming out on the other side in about five minutes. Once there, he had only to cross a bit of open ground to reach the orchard wall of the convent. This took barely another five minutes.
At the foot of the wall he stopped, but only for a few seconds. He unhooked his cloak, rolled it into a ball, and tossed it over the wall. The cloak off, he stood in a velvet coat, white leather breeches, and top-boots. The coat was fastened round the waist by a belt in which were a pair of pistols. A broad-brimmed hat covered his head and shaded his face.
With the same rapidity with which he had removed his garment that might have hindered his climbing the wall, he began to scale it. His foot readily found a chink between the stones; he sprang up, seizing the coping, and was on the other side without even touching the top of the wall over which he bounded.
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