Family life -- Juvenile fiction; Voyages and travels -- Juvenile fiction
"Lovedy," she said, "Lovedy; find Lovedy," and then she died.
CHAPTER V.
THE TIN BOX AND ITS TREASURE.
Cecile and Maurice D'Albert were the orphan children of a French father
and a Spanish mother. Somewhere in the famous valleys of the Pyrenees
these two had loved each other, and married. Maurice D'Albert, the
father, was a man of a respectable class and for that class of rather
remarkable culture. He owned a small vineyard, and had a picturesque
chateau, which he inherited from his ancestors, among the hills. Pretty
Rosalie was without money. She had neither fortune nor education. She
sprang from a lower class than her husband; but her young and childish
face possessed so rare an order of beauty that it would be impossible
for any man to ask her where she came from, or what she did. Maurice
D'Albert loved her at once. He married her when she was little more
than a child; and for four years the young couple lived happily among
their native mountains; for Rosalie's home had been only as far away as
the Spanish side of the Pyrenees.
But at the end of four years clouds came. The vine did not bear; a
blight seemed to rest on all vegetation of the prosperous little farm.
D'Albert, for the first time in his life, was short of money for his
simple needs. This was an anxiety; but worse troubles were to follow.
Pretty Rosalie bore him a son; and then, when no one even apprehended
danger, suddenly died. This death completely broke down the poor man.
He had loved Rosalie so well that when she left him the sun seemed
absolutely withdrawn from his life. He lived for many more years, but
he never really held up his head again. Rosalie was gone! Even his
children now could scarcely make him care for life. He began to hate
the place where he had been so happy with his young wife. And when a
distant cousin, who had long desired the little property, came and
offered to buy it, D'Albert sold the home of his ancestors. The cousin
gave him a small sum of money down for the pretty chateau and vineyard,
and agreed to pay the rest in yearly instalments, extending over twelve
years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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