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Bettie's Books
A Stuga On the Cusp of the Orust Riviera, tucked away next to a hobbit hole in the woods.
Trilby
bookshelves: published-1894, autumn-2012, gothic, e-book, library-in-norway, victorian
Recommended to ☯Bettie☯ by: Mentioned in Treveryan
'
Mimi Pinson est une blonde,'
Une blonde que l'on connait;
Elle n'a qu'une robe au monde.
Launderirette! et qu'un bonnet!'
Opening:
IT WAS A FINE, SUNNY, showery day in April.
The big studio window was open at the top, and let in a pleasant breeze from the north-west. Things were beginning to look shipshape at last. The big piano, a semi-grand by Broadwood, had arrived from England by 'the Little Quickness' (la Petite Vitesse, as the goods trains are called in France), and lay, freshly tuned, alongside the eastern wall; on the wall opposite was a panoply of foils, masks, and boxing-gloves.
"A street there is in Paris famous
For which no rhyme our language yields;
Roo Nerve day Petty Shong its name is—
The New Street of the Little Fields… "
The Ballad of Bouillabaisse - William Makepeace Thackeray, as read by Little Billee.
PART II
'Dieu! qu'il fait bon la regarder.
La gracieuse, bonne et belle!
Pour les grands biens qui sont en elle
Chacun est pret de la louer.'
NOBODY KNEW EXACTLY how Svengali lived, and very few knew where (or why). He occupied a roomy dilapidated garret, au sixieme, in the Rue Tire-Liard, with a trucklebed and a pianoforte for furniture, and very little else.
Svengali placing Trilby in a trance to enable her to sing...Svengali (1931) with John Barrymore: http://youtu.be/LSzp3UzQQe4
PART III
Par dela, ne dela la mer
Ne s'jay dame ni damoiselle
Qui soil en tous biens parfaits telle—
C'est un songe que d'y penser:
Dieu! qu'il fait bon la regarder!'
ONE LOVELY MONDAY morning in late September, at about eleven or so, Taffy and the Laird sat in the studio—each opposite his picture, smoking, nursing his knee, and saying nothing. The heaviness of Monday weighed on their spirits more than usual, for the three friends had returned late on the previous night from a week spent at Barbizon and in the forest of Fontainebleau—a heavenly week among the painters; Rousseau, Millet, Corot, Daubigny, let us suppose, and others less known to fame this day.
PART IV
'Felicite passee
Qui ne peux revenir.
Tourment de ma pensee.
Que n'ay-je, en te perdant, perdu le souvenir!'
MID-DAY HAD STRUCK. The expected hamper had not turned up in the Place St. Anatole des Arts.
SVENGALI HAD DIED FROM HEART DISEASE. The cut he had received from Gecko had not apparently (as far as the verdict of a coroner's inquest could be trusted) had any effect in aggravating his malady or hastening his death.
Please to note that if you type trilby george du maurier into Google pictures you will find the illustrations there.
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