A Passion in the Desert by Honoré de Balzac (the little red hen ebook .TXT) 📕

The Provencal threw his arms round the trunk of one of the palm trees,as though it were the body of a friend, and then, in the shelter ofthe thin, straight shadow that the palm cast upon the granite, hewept. Then sitting down he remained as he was, contemplating withprofound sadness the implacable scene, which was all he had to lookupon. He cried aloud, to measure the solitude. His voice, lost in thehollows of the hill, sounded faintly, and aroused no echo--the echowas in his own heart. The Provencal was twenty-two years old:--heloaded his carbine.

"There'll be time enough," he said to himself, laying on the groundthe weapon which alone could bring him deliverance.

Viewing alternately the dark expanse of the desert and the blueexpanse of the sky, the soldier dreamed of France--he smelled withdelight the gutters of Paris--he remembered the towns through which hehad passed, the faces of his comrades, the most