Library / Literature & Fiction
The Trampling of the Lilies
- Pages
- about 255
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 4.7 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
These are they
Who ride on the court gale, control its tides;
Whose frown abases and whose smile exalts.
They shine like any rainbow--and, perchance,
Their colours are as transient.
It was spring at Bellecour--the spring of 1789, a short three months
before the fall of the Bastille came to give the nobles pause, and
make them realise that these new philosophies, which so long they have
derided, were by no means the idle vapours they had deemed them.
By the brook, plashing its glittering course through the park of
Bellecour, wandered La Boulaye, his long, lean, figure clad with a
sombreness that was out of harmony in that sunlit, vernal landscape.
But the sad-hued coat belied that morning a heart that sang within his
breast as joyously as any linnet of the woods through which he strayed.
That he was garbed in black was but the outward indication of his
clerkly office, for he was secretary to the most noble the Marquis de
Fresnoy de Bellecour, and so clothed in the livery of the ink by which
he lived. His face was pale and lean and thoughtful, but within his
great, intelligent eyes there shone a light of new-born happiness. Under
his arm he carried a volume of the new philosophies which Rousseau had
lately given to the world, and which was contributing so vastly to the
mighty change that was impending. But within his soul there dwelt
in that hour no such musty subject as the metaphysical dreams of old
Rousseau. His mood inclined little to the “Discourses upon the Origin of
Inequality” which his elbow hugged to his side. Rather was it a mood of
song and joy and things of light, and his mind was running on a string
of rhymes which mentally he offered up to his divinity. A high-born
lady was she, daughter to his lordly employer, the most noble Marquis
of Bellecour. And he a secretary, a clerk!
A short sample. Read the whole book
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