In spite of the
warm red glow from the crimson silk curtains, he was very pale, and,
though so remarkably handsome, his face wore such an expression of
hatred and cruelty, that he would have inspired dislike, rather than
admiration--as he sat there with a fierce frown contracting his brow,
and savagely gnawing his under lip with his gleaming white teeth. In
fine, the occupant of the carriage that had so nearly run over the Baron
de Sigognac was no other than the young Duke of Vallombreuse.
"Another failure!" said he to himself, with an oath, as he rolled along
up the broad quay past the Tuileries. "And yet I promised that stupid
rascal of a coachman of mine twenty-five louis if he could be adroit
enough to run afoul of that confounded de Sigognac--who is the bane of
my life--and drive over him, as if by accident. Decidedly the star of my
destiny is not in the ascendant--this miserable little rustic lordling
gets the better of me in everything. Isabelle, sweet Isabelle, adores
HIM, and detests me--he has beaten my lackeys, and dared to wound ME.
But there shall be an end of this sort of thing, and that speedily--even
though he be invulnerable, and bear a charmed life, he must and shall be
put out of my way--I swear it! though I should be forced to risk my name
and my title to compass it.
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