The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Son of Clemenceau, by Alexandre (fils)
Dumas

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Title: The Son of Clemenceau

Author: Alexandre (fils) Dumas

Release Date: October 1, 2004 [eBook #13572]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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THE SON OF CLEMENCEAU

A Novel of Modern Love and Life

A Sequel to _The Clemenceau Case_

by

ALEXANDER DUMAS (FILS)

CHAPTER I.

STUDENT AND SOLDIER.

The sunset-gun had been fired from the ramparts of the fortifications of
Munich and the shadows were thickly descending on the famous old city of
Southern Germany. The evening breeze in this truly March weather came
chill over the plain of stones where Isar flowed darkly, and at the
first puff of it, forcing him to wind his cloak round him, a lonely
wanderer in the low quarter recognized why "the City of Monks" was also
called "the Realm of Rheumatism."

The new town, which he had not yet seen, might justify yet another of
its nicknames, "the German Athens," but here were, in this southern and
unfashionable suburb, only a few modern structures, and most of the
quaint and rather picturesque dwellings, overhanging the stores, dated
anterior to the filling up of the town moat in 1791.

The stranger was clearly fond of antiquarian spectacles, for his eye,
though too youthful to belong to a Dryasdust professor, and unshaded by
the almost universal colored spectacles of the learned classes, gloated
on the mansions, once inhabited by the wealthy burghers. They were
irregular in plan and period of erection; the windows had ornamental
frames of great depth, but some were blocked up, which gave the facades
a sinister aspect; the walls had not only ornamental tablets in stucco,
but, in a better light, would have shown rude fresco paintings not
unworthy mediaeval Italian dwellings. Many of the fronts resembled the
high poops of the castellated ships of three hundred years ago, and they
cast a shadow on the muddy pavement. As they resembled ships, the slimy
footway seemed the strand w