Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read this ebook for free! No credit card needed, absolutely nothing to pay.
Words: 20895 in 12 pages
This is an ebook sharing website. You can read the uploaded ebooks for free here. No credit cards needed, nothing to pay. If you want to own a digital copy of the ebook, or want to read offline with your favorite ebook-reader, then you can choose to buy and download the ebook.
CLAUDINE'S DOVES.
BY MRS. E. W. LATIMER.
A few days since, as I was driving in the Bois de Boulogne with a friend, a slender, sweet young girl was pointed out to me. She was walking beside her mother, and there was a loving, tender look in her blue eyes, a shrinking modesty in her deportment, which interested me at the first glance. She was apparently about fifteen. I observed to the friend who pointed her out to me that she was fair, modest, and pretty. "Yes," he replied, "and she is the heroine of a very pretty story."
Claudine's parents, though of good birth and education, were not rich; they lived on the third story. They had only one old servant. Claudine's mother was her daughter's nurse and governess. Till the German army marched on Paris they had a peaceful, refined, and happy home.
At the moment of which I am about to write, the siege had ceased, and the terrible days of the Commune were almost over. The little family began to breathe more freely--only in a certain sense, however, for they were all gathered together in a little close room, which would have looked into the court-yard of their house had not its windows been blocked up by pillows, mattresses, and furniture. They dared not look into the street, they dared not go into their own sitting-room, for the Versailles troops were entering Paris, bomb-shells were bursting in all directions, and volleys of musketry were being fired round every street corner. Paris was like a city expecting to be sacked, with the additional horror that each man's foes might be those of his own household.
Of a sudden they began to feel a stifling heat. Thick smoke rose all around them. There was the sickening and suggestive smell of coal-oil in the air. Claudine's father felt that he must know what was going on. To look out of the windows might be death to all of them; still he ran into the sitting-room, tore down the beds and pillows from a window, and looked out on the Rue de Rivoli.
The father of Claudine, aghast with fear and horror, stepped back into the sitting-room. "I see no escape for us," he cried.
A cry ran through the house of "Save yourselves!" Claudine's father gathered together some important papers, some money, and a few jewels. The mother and her old servant spread a blanket on the floor, and flung into it such objects as they could gather up in haste, tying it by the four corners. As to Claudine, frantic with terror, she ran into her bedroom and brought out what she valued most--a cage containing two young turtle-doves. They were her only pets. She loved them better than anything else in the world, except old Cl?mence and her father and mother.
The torches of the Communards had already set fire to the wood-work saturated with coal-oil. Flames were breaking out in every direction. The inhabitants of the doomed houses were forced to make their way into the street, or stay to be burned alive. The first to rush down the staircase was Claudine, cage in hand. She ran into the street. A bomb-shell burst as she reached it, and her terrified parents saw her drop upon the sidewalk, while the cage fell at some distance, rolling away out of her hand.
"What was the use of running out to pick up those? They will be roast birds anyhow in the next half-hour."
On hearing these cruel words little Claudine began to comprehend for the first time the greatness of the danger. She drew back, darted a look of reproach at the vile woman who stood laughing at her trouble, and then, with the big tears rolling down her cheeks, "God will know how to keep them safe," she said, and opened the cage door. The doves flew out. They poised themselves a moment; then they rose into the air, and flew away to seek a purer sky above the clouds of smoke and sulphur. In spite of what the cruel woman said, the doves were saved.
Meantime all hands were busy putting out the flames. The fire was at last got under. The furniture and wood-work of the first and second stories were badly burned and broken, but the rest of the house was saved.
Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg
(0)More posts by @FreeBooks
