The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
When M. Dorine heard the indescribable cry that rang through the silent
house, he hurried from the library, and found Philip standing like a
ghost in the middle of the chamber.
It was not until long afterwards that Wentworth learned the details of
the calamity that had befallen him. On the previous night Mademoiselle
Dorine had retired to her room in seemingly perfect health. She
dismissed her maid with a request to be awakened early the next morning.
At the appointed hour the girl entered the chamber. Mademoiselle Dorine
was sitting in an arm-chair, apparently asleep. The candle had burnt
down to the socket; a book lay half open on the carpet at her feet. The
girl started when she saw that the bed had not been occupied, and that
her mistress still wore an evening dress. She rushed to Mademoiselle
Dorine's side. It was not slumber. It was death.
Two messages were at once despatched to Philip, one to the station at
G----, the other to his hotel. The first missed him on the road, the
second he had neglected to open. On his arrival at M. Dorine's house,
the servant, under the supposition that Wentworth had been advised of
Mademoiselle Dorine's death, broke the intelligence with awkward
cruelty, by showing him directly to the _salon_.
Mademoiselle Dorine's wealth, her beauty, the suddenness of her death,
and the romance that had in some way attached itself to her love for the
young American, drew crowds to witness the funeral ceremonies which took
place in the church in the Rue d'Aguesseau. The body was to be laid in
M. Dorine's tomb, in the cemetery of Montmartre.
This tomb requires a few words of description. First there was a grating
of filigraned iron; through this you looked into a small vestibule or
hall, at the end of which was a massive door of oak opening upon a short
flight of stone steps descending into the tomb. The vault was fifteen or
twenty feet square, ingeniously ventilated from the ceiling, but
unlighted. It contained two sarcophagi: the first held the remains of
Madame Dorine, long since dead; the other was new, and bore on one side
the letters J. D., in monogram, interwoven with fleurs-de-lis.
The funeral train stopped at the gate of the small garden that enclosed
the place of burial, only the immediate relatives following the bearers
into the tomb. A slender wax candle, such as is used in Catholic
churches, burnt at the foot of the uncovered sarcophagus, casting a dim
glow over the centre of the apartment, and deepening the shadows which
seemed to huddle together in the corners. By this flickering light the
coffin was placed in its granite shell, the heavy slab laid over it
reverently, and the oaken door revolved on its rusty hinges, shutting
out the uncertain ray of sunshine that had ventured to peep in on the
darkness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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