Romances - 11 Author:Alexandre Dumas Volume: 11 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1893 Original Publisher: Estes and Lauriat Subjects: Fiction / General Fiction / Classics Fiction / Historical Fiction / Literary Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. W... more »hen 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 18 SOMETIMES DIFFICULT TO DISTINGUISH THE DREAM FROM THE REALITY. Bussy, before falling, had had time to slip his handkerchief under his shirt and to buckle his sword-belt above it, so as to make a sort of bandage for the open and burning wound whence the blood escaped like flame; but he had already lost enough blood to faint, as we have seen. However, whether life persisted in his brain, excited by pain and anger, and apparently unconscious, or whether this swoon was followed by a fever and then by a second swoon, here is what Bussy saw, or thought he saw, in that hour of dream or reality, during that instant of twilight placed between the darkness of two nights. He found himself in a room with carved wood furniture, figured tapestry, and a painted ceiling. These figures in all possible attitudes, holding flowers, carrying lances, seemed to step from the walls on which they moved, to ascend to the ceiling in mysterious ways. Between the two windows was placed the portrait of a woman glowing with light; only it seemed to Bussy that the frame of this picture was simply the casing of a door. Bussy, motionless, fixed to his bed by a superior power, deprived of all his movements, having lost all his faculties save that of seeing, looked at all these figures with dim eyes, admiring the faint smiles of those that carried the flowers and the grotesque anger of those carrying the swords. Had he already seen these figures, or was he seeing them for th...« less