Led Astray and The Sphinx

Led Astray and The Sphinx, by
Octave Feuillet

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Title: Led Astray and The Sphinx Two Novellas In One Volume
Author: Octave Feuillet
Release Date: July 31, 2005 [EBook #16403]
Language: English
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ASTRAY AND THE SPHINX ***

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LED ASTRAY
By OCTAVE FEUILLET, author of "Romance of a Poor Young Man,"
etc.

[Illustration]
NEW YORK AND LONDON
STREET & SMITH, PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1891
By STREET & SMITH

LED ASTRAY.
CHAPTER I.
A GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION.
GEORGE L---- to PAUL B., PARIS.
ROZEL, 15th September.
It's nine o'clock in the evening, my dear friend, and you have just
arrived from Germany. They hand you my letter, the post-mark of
which informs you at once that I am absent from Paris. You indulge in
a gesture of annoyance, and call me a vagabond. Nevertheless, you
settle down in your best arm-chair, you open my letter, and you hear
that I have been for the past five days domesticated in a flour-mill in
Lower Normandy. In a flour-mill! What the duse can he be doing in a
mill? A wrinkle appears on your forehead, your eyebrows are drawn
together; you lay down my letter for a moment; you attempt to
penetrate this mystery by the unaided power of your imagination.
Suddenly a playful expression beams upon your countenance; your
mouth expresses the irony of a wise man tempered by the indulgence of
a friend; you have caught a glimpse, through an opera-comique cloud,
of a miller's pretty wife with powdered hair, a waist all trimmed with
gay ribbons, a light and short skirt, and stockings with gilded clocks; in
short, one of those fair young millers' wives whose heart goes pit-a-pat
with hautboy accompaniment. But the graces who are ever sporting in

your mind sometimes lead it astray; my fair miller is as much like the
creature of your imagination as I am like a youthful Colin; her head is
adorned with a towering cotton night-cap to which the thickest possible
coating of flour fails to restore its primitive color; she wears a coarse
woolen petticoat which would abrade the hide of an elephant; in short,
it frequently happens to me to confound the miller's wife with the
miller himself, after which it is sufficient to add that I am not the least
curious to know whether or not her heart goes pit-a-pat. The truth is,
that, not knowing how to kill time in your absence, and having no
reason to expect you to return before another month; (it's your own
fault!), I solicited a mission. The council-general of the department of
---- had lately, and quite opportunely, expressed officially the wish that
a certain ruined abbey, called Rozel Abbey, should be classed among
historical monuments. I have been commissioned to investigate closely
the candidate's titles. I hastened with all possible speed to the chief
town of this artistic department, where I effected my entrance with the
important gravity of a man who holds within his hands the life or the
death of a monument dear to the country. I made some inquiries at the
hotel; great was my mortification when I discovered that no one
seemed to suspect that such a thing as Rozel Abbey existed within a
circuit of a hundred leagues. I called at the prefecture while still
laboring under the effect of this disappointment; the prefect, Valton,
whom you know very well, received me with his usual affability; but to
the questions I addressed him on the subject of the condition of the
ruins which the council seemed so desirous of preserving for the
admiration of its constituents, he replied with an absent smile, that his
wife, who had visited these ruins on the occasion of an excursion into
the country, while she was sojourning on the sea shore, could tell me a
great deal more about the ruins than he possibly could himself.
He invited me to dinner, and in the evening, Madame Valton, after the
usual struggles of expiring modesty, showed me, in her album, some
views of the famous ruins sketched with considerable taste. She became
mildly excited while speaking to me of these venerable remains,
situated, if she is to be believed, in the midst of an enchanting site, and,
above all, particularly well suited for picnics and country excursions. A
beseeching and corrupting