This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 Excerpt: ... had he not remained apart, not from excess of indifference, but from excess of love? The Queen acknowledged to herself that she was unjust,--unjust for reproaching Charny, on that terrible night of the Fifth and Sixth of October, because he remained with the King rather than the Queen, and had one look for Andre'e between every two looks for herself. She had been hard in not sharing, with a heart more tender, the deep sorrow which had moved Charny at the sight of his dead brother. It is thus with all deep and true love. In the presence of the complaining one, the beloved object seems full of asperities. At a short distance all these reproaches seem well-founded. Defects of character, oddities of mind, forgetfulness of heart, all appear under a magnifying glass, and it is hard for one to understand how these defects have been so long unnoticed and endured. But if the object of this fatal investigation withdraws from sight, either voluntarily or by force, these asperities disappear, which had before wounded us like thorns. The disagreeable outlines are effaced. A too vigorous realism vanishes before the poetic breath of distance and the caressing touch of memory. We no longer judge; we compare. We condemn ourselves with a rigor measured by the indulgence felt for the other, who we see has been ill appreciated; and the result of this heart-travail is, that after an absence of eight or ten days, the absentee seems more dear and indispensable than ever. It is to be understood that we are not supposing a case where another passion profits by this absence to take the place of the first. Such were the feelings of the Queen towards Charny, when the door opened, and the Count, who had, as we know, just left the King's study, appeared, in the irreproachable garb of a...