Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read this ebook for free! No credit card needed, absolutely nothing to pay.
Words: 52822 in 37 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.
THE FLORENTINE DAGGER
Containing a nervous cavalier with frightened eyes--Introducing a mysterious and puritanical satyr--And discussing the tired ghosts that haunted the heart of Julien De Medici.
In the firelight the face of Julien De Medici appeared like a gray and scarlet mask of ennui. Oblivious of the ornamental room with its pattern of books, statues and tapestries, he sat stiffly in the carved wooden chair and stared at the burning logs. He was waiting for his host, Victor Ballau.
Except for the crackling of the burning wood, the room was still. Cowled shadows reared witch-like shapes across the walls and ceiling.
It was night outside. Wind quarreled with the stone buildings. Removing his eyes reluctantly from the burning logs, De Medici glanced at the darkness of the empty room. He studied the shadows with frightened eyes.
He was a curious man of thirty. An aristocratic ugliness marked his face. The long, thin nose, the high cheek-bones, the wide, inanimate mouth and the green-tinted skin gave him a lithographic rather than human air. His black hair was cut in a straight line across his forehead. He wore it unparted in such a manner that it made an almost square frame for the elongated rigidity of his face.
A striking and bizarre figure, poised, precise and seemingly of another world, he lived chiefly in his eyes. They were narrow and black, symmetrical to a point of artificiality. But under the parenthesis of the brows lived a startling man.
From the carved chair before the burning logs, De Medici studied the shadows. He disliked darkness and empty rooms. Shadows frightened him. Opened doors chilled him. Yet his immobile face smiled derisively.
"Fear," he thought. "It's like a disease."
He smiled again as if amused at the emotion disturbing him.
"Ghosts," he continued to himself. His eyes were on the opened door in the shadows at the end of the room. "Ghosts walk around inside me."
And he fell to thinking of an old subject--of the ghosts that prowled the mysterious corridors of his soul.... De Medici--ah, what a name! A sarcophagus of evil....
Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg
(0)More posts by @FreeBooks
