Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 85: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HER ROYAL LOVER. 77 forget herself to the point of failing in her dignity of a wife, in her title of a mother; but the undenia- ble reality was there; he had seen a man, this man, ashamed at being discovered, had fled; his flight alone betrayed him. “Is it because one is king that one may permit oneself to take the wife of others?” He remains for a long time absorbed in these painful reflections; but, reconsidering, he recovers from the discouragement which invaded him. He said to himself, “that he the energetic man, must act, must watch, in order to acquire a certainty. He would learn if his wife was faithful, and then, no more offensive suspicions, no more injurious doubts. But, if she was culpable, his vengeance would be as great as the immensity of her guilt.” During the time that he remains thus absorbed in his reflections, it seems to him that he hears an un- usual running about, especially at this early hour. Doors were opened and shut, running steps were heard in every direction. Decidedly something is occurring. : He rings violently. Vassili, his faithful valet, the same one who had served his father, appeared immediately. but in what a state!—his face is frightful, livid, unrecog- nizable. : a) “Monseigneur! monseigneur! Kassar—my brother —my poor brother, has been assassinated this very night! Not finding him in his chamber and sur- prised at his delay, he so punctual in his duties, | have sought him everywhere, and I have at last dis- covered him in the garden, at the foot of the window of the corridor, stretched out dead, stark dead! His visage was coated with a thick coating of mud ac- cumulated by the night’s rain; his arms extended Eomichbooks.com