3-052-324 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"'What is this?' he exclaimed, horrorstruck. 'Mademoiselle has fainted', I gasped out", 1872. Illustration to a short story by F. C. Burnand: 'The Barrow of Bordeaux; Or, A Life's Mystery. Prologue. (Extract from a letter written by the person known as Charles Denmont to his friend X-------.)... Before I could recover myself - before I could do more than cry "Clotilde, my own!" - her father, the aged Count, his white hair streaming over his morning robe, threw open the folding-doors and rushed in, followed by the Countess and the servants. "What is this?" he exclaimed, horrorstruck. "Mademoiselle has fainted," I gasped out. "I had only this moment entered, and"... "What have you said to her?" asked her mother, who had by this time thrown herself on her knees by the apparently lifeless form of Clotilde. "Nothing!" I cried. "I call Heaven to witness, nothing! I did but ask a question on which depended much of her - of our - happiness." "What question?" demanded the Count, sternly. Now then at last would come, I hoped, the explanation. "I asked her," I replied calmly, "what is the Barrow of Bordeaux?"'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.