The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or the Real Robinson Crusoe by Joseph Xavier Saintine
page 15 of 144 (10%)
page 15 of 144 (10%)
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was shut up in a cellar; he escaped through the window; in a garret;
he descended by the roof. Then, pronounced incorrigible, he was expelled from the university. He left it joyous and happy, escaped from the tutor commissioned to conduct him to his father, and at last wholly free, his own master, he took lodgings in a cabin, not far from the Royal Salmon, and thought himself monarch of the universe. As soon as the doors of the inn were opened, he penetrated there with the earliest fogs of morning, with the first beams of day; in the evening he was the last to cross the threshold, after the extinction of the lights. All day long, seated at a little table opposite the bar, between a pipe and a pewter pot, he watched the movements of Kitty, and followed her with admiring eyes. Catherine was not slow to perceive this new passion; but she was accustomed to admiring eyes, and therefore paid but little heed to them. She was then at the age of twenty-two, in all the glory of her transient royalty; he, scarcely sixteen, was in her eyes a boy, a raw and awkward boy, like almost all the other students, and she contented herself with now and then bestowing a slight smile upon him, in common with her other customers. But this mechanical smile, this half extinguished spark, did but increase the flame, by kindling in the young man's soul a ray of hope. |
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