La Dame De Monsoreau Author:Alexandre Dumas General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1893 Original Publisher: Little, Brown, and company Subjects: France Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary History / Europe / France Literary Criticism / European / French Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there... more » may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. HOW IT IS SOMETIMES DIFFICULT TO DISTINGUISH A DREAM FROM THE REALITY. Bussy had had time, before falling, to pass his handkerchief under his shirt, and to buckle the belt of his sword over it, so as to make a kind of bandage tb the open wound whence the blood was flowing; but he had already lost so much blood that in consequence of that loss he had fainted away, as we have seen. During his faintingfit, this is what Bussy saw, or thought he saw : He found himself in a room with furniture of carved wood, with a tapestry of figures, and a painted ceiling. These figures, in all possible attitudes, holding flowers, carrying arms, seemed to him to be stepping from the walls. Between the two windows appeared the portrait of a woman, glowing with light; only it seemed to Bussy that the frame of that portrait was the casing of a doorway. He, fixed to his bed, lay regarding all this. All at once the woman of the portrait seemed to move; and an adorable creature, clothed in a long white robe, with fair hair falling over her shoulders, and with eyes black as jet, with long lashes, and with a skin under which he seemed to see the blood circulate, advanced towards the bed. This woman was so wonderfully beautiful that Bussy made a violent effort to rise and throw himself at her feet. But he seemed to be confined there by bonds like those which keep the dead body in the tomb, while the soul mounts to the skies. This forced him to look...« less