To Tell You the Truth E-Book

Leonard Merrick

• Herausgeber: Publisher s11838
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

To Tell You the Truth written by English novelist Leonard Merrick. This book is one of many works by him.  It has already published in 1922. And now republish in ebook format. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book.

Leseprobe

To Tell You the Truth

By

Leonard Merrick

Table of Contents

I. MADEMOISELLE MA MÈRE

II. ARIBAUD'S TWO WIVES

III. THAT VILLAIN HER FATHER

IV. THE STATUE

V. THE CELEBRITY AT HOME

VI. PICQ PLAYS THE HERO

VII. A FLAT TO SPARE

VIII. A PORTRAIT OF A COWARD

IX. THE BOOM

X. PILAR NARANJO

XI. THE GIRL WHO WAS TIRED OF LOVE

XII. IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1918

XIII. A POT OF PANSIES

XIV. FLOROMOND AND FRISONNETTE

I. MADEMOISELLE MA MÈRE

She was born in Chauville-le-Vieux. Her mother gave piano lessons at the local Lycée de Jeunes Filles, and her father had been "professeur de violon" at the little Conservatoire. Music was her destiny. As a hollow-eyed, stunted child, who should have been romping in the unfrequented park, she had been doomed to hours of piano practice in the stuffy salon, where during eight months of the year a window was never opened for longer than it took to shake out the rug. Her name was Marie Lamande.

She had accepted her fate passively. If it had not been scales and exercises that made a prisoner of her, she recognised that it would have been fractions, or zoology. In France, schools actually educate, but few children have a childhood. On the first day of a term, when the wan girls reassemble, they sometimes ask one another—curious to hear what novelty the "holidays" may have yielded, amid the home work—"Did you have a little promenade during the vacances?"

Because its Lycée was widely known, English and American families came to stay in Chauville—the English pupils discovering what it was to be taught with enthusiasm—and Marie knew French girls who had been initiated into the pleasures of tea-parties. Open-mouthed, she heard that the extravagant anglaise or américaine must have spent at least five or six francs on the cakes. But all the foreigners successively grew tired of inviting French children whose astonished mothers sent them trooping as often as they were asked, and, in no case, gave an invitation in return, and Marie herself never had the good luck to be asked.

Like her parents, she had been intended for the groove of tuition, and in due course tuition became her lot. But she was a gifted pianist, and ambitious; she dreamed of glory. Some years after she had been left alone, when her age was twenty-seven, she dared to escape from the melancholy town that she had grown to execrate. A slight little woman, without influence or knowledge of life, she aspired to conquer Paris. She attacked it with a sum sufficient to keep her for twelve months.

Her arrival at once frightened and enraptured her. In Chauville, at eight o'clock in the evening, a few of the shopkeepers had sat before their doorways, in the dark, a while; at nine, their crude streets were as vacant as the boulevards of the professional and independent classes, whose covert homes signified, even in the daytime, VISITORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Behind the shutters of long avenues were over sixty thousand persons—most of them heroically hard-working—of a race that the pleasure-seeking English called "frivolous," content with no semblance of entertainment but the ill-patronised performances provided by a gloomy theatre, which was unbarred on only two days in the week. Paris, spirited and sparkling, in the tourist regions, took her breath away. Music called to her imperiously. She sat, squeezed among crowds, at the recitals of celebrities; and came out prayerful, to wonder: "Will crowds ever applaud me?" But after the first few days she reduced her expenses, and her allowance for concert-going was strict.