A Pawn in the Game Author:William Henry Fitchett General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1908 Original Publisher: Smith, Elder Subjects: France History / General History / Europe / France Literary Criticism / American / General Travel / Europe / France Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be ... more »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 AT BRIENNE It was a late September afternoon in the year 1784. The slanting rays of the sun poured in white flame through the archway into the great court of the military school at Brienne, and burned on its white pavement; but shadows black and cool filled the low colonnade that ran round three sides of it. From one angle of the colonnade there floated out on the drowsy afternoon air a clamour of youthful voices rising and falling in pulses of anger. The trained ear could distinguish the liquid accents of the South, the deeper tones of Brittanyand of the West, the hard and nasal tones of Eastern France; but all were shrill with wrath. A boy wearing his coat turned inside out -- a token of offended discipline and its penalty -- stood in the middle of the court and watched the tumult in the shadowy angle. He was for the moment an outcast from his comrades, and could only look on the scene from a distance with eager, regretful eyes. From a window in the steep roof above, on the opposite side of the square, a Benedictine monk, one of the college Fathers, looked down with an air of detached interest, a smile on his fat and inexpressive features. It was " a row amongstthe boys," a common incident in a school where monks taught soldiers, discipline was laxf and rebellion chronic. The sound o'f angry voices rose suddenly to a shout, and the lad with the turned coat, drawn by an attraction he could not resist, ran towards the crowd of...« less