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The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Historical Mystery, by Honore de Balzac This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: An Historical Mystery Author: Honore de Balzac Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley Release Date: March, 1998 [Etext #1678] Posting Date: February 28, 2010 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY *** Produced by John Bickers, Dagny, and Bonnie Sala AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY (The Gondreville Mystery) By Honore De Balzac Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley DEDICATION To Monsieur de Margone. In grateful remembrance, from his guest at the Chateau de Sache. De Balzac. AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY PART I CHAPTER I. JUDAS The autumn of the year 1803 was one of the finest in the early part of that period of the present century which we now call "Empire." Rain had refreshed the earth during the month of October, so that the trees were still green and leafy in November. The French people were beginning to put faith in a secret understanding between the skies and Bonaparte, then declared Consul for life,--a belief in which that man owes part of his prestige; strange to say, on the day the sun failed him, in 1812, his luck ceased! About four in the afternoon on the fifteenth of November, 1803, the sun was casting what looked like scarlet dust upon the venerable tops of four rows of elms in a long baronial avenue, and sparkling on the sand and grassy places of an immense _rond-point_, such as we often see in the country where land is cheap enough to be sacrificed to ornament. The air was so pure, the atmosphere so tempered that a family was sitting out of doors as if it were summer. A man dressed in a hunting-jacket of green drilling with green buttons, and breeches of the same stuff, and wearing shoes with thin soles and gaiters to the knee, was cleaning a gun with the minute care a skilful huntsman gives to the work in his leisure hours. This man had neither game nor game-bag, nor any of the accoutrements which denote either departure for a hunt or the ret
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