Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: D'ORSAY'S LEFT FOOT it hath befallen that to me and none other is entrusted the record of certain momentous deeds, since Fate hath writ that the chronicling thereof shall be vested but in my unworthy self, then, as Thackeray hath it, the time is ripe, and with an eye single to one grim but grave intent will I plunge bravely and valiantly into the recital thereof, with no merry wanderings into flowery by-paths nor dallyings in pleasant gardens. Mine is it not to detail the gory adventures of the Crusaders in their search for the Golden Fleece. Ever must I be silent regarding the weary, vain endeavors of King John to gain the governorship of Paris. And though my pen struggleth in my fingers to write of the daring deeds of Prince Griffon in his royal galleys, yet 1 must needs quell these leaping desires, and egg on my fitful Muse to the tale that doth more intimately concern us. As I emerged, then, from " The Crusaders in their search for the Golden Fleece' the smoke-reeking atmosphere of the grill-room of the Golden Grasshopper, I found myself beneath the starlit vault of a black and murky sky. The rain fell in torrents, but all unheeding the dampness I stalked on, with monstrous thoughts crowding my ponderous brain. " If it be," I reasoned all subtly to myself, " then by the rood, 'tis not so worse. And yet were it not so, — ha! the thought maddeneth me ! That were a lucky chance, and by the belt of St. Christopher 'twould save the day and evermore the black and guilty truth should shrivel and burn secretly in the depths of my oppressed soul. Ha! this martyr-like vengeance shall yet be mine; and from the accursed cell, shrouded in deep and inscrutable mystery, the ominous arrogance of a noble slave shall — " I paused, perforce, for as my martial footsteps fell re... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.