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b324862
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Was it always going to be like this? He away ahead of me, with his own moods that I did not share, his secret troubles that I did not know?Would we never be together, he a man and I a woman, standing shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, with no gulf between us?
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Daphne du Maurier |
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e9111dc
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Perhaps losing my first child had made me hard. Nothing Robert could say or do would ever again surprise me. If he chose to leave us this way, although my heart yearned after him it was his choice, not ours.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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0e8d10f
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No, Robert did not understand. Handsome, gay, debonair, perfectly self-possessed, he had yet not grasped the fact that his young sister, with her smattering of education and her provincial dress, belonged to a world that he had long left behind him, a world which, despite its apparent backwardness and rustic simplicity, had greater depth than his.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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edba65a
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I put Manderley first, before anything else. And it does not prosper, that sort of love. They don't preach about it in the churches. Christ said nothing about stones, and bricks, and walls, the love that a man can bear for his plot of earth, his soil, his little kingdom.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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d0b5bdc
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Something within each one of us had been awakened that we had not known was there; some dream, desire, or doubt, flickered into life by that same rumor, took root, and flourished. We were none of us the same afterwards. Robert, Michel, Francois, Edme, myself, were changed imperceptibly. The rumor, true or false, had brought into the open hopes and dreads which, hitherto concealed, would now be part of our ordinary living selves.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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fbcbc61
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The carriages and the folk who rode in them, gorgeously if sometimes absurdly attired, had made a kind of magic, and given a fairy-tale glitter to the capital. Now it seemed just like any other city,
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Daphne du Maurier |
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d107ffa
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The winter of 1789 was the hardest within living memory. No one, not even the old people of the district, had ever known anything like it. The cold weather set in early, and, coming on top of a bad harvest, led to great distress among the tenant farmers and the peasants. We were hard hit at the foundry too, for conditions on the road became impossible, what with frost and ice, and then snow; and we were unable to deliver our goods to Paris ..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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09d1f5d
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Bread was their main fare--they could not afford meat--and a man earning at the rate of one livre or twenty sous a day, with a hungry family to feed, paid half his wages on bread alone.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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6251bd7
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We had been careful, ever since the September decrees, to adopt the new courtesies. Monsieur and madame were things of the past, like the old calendar. I had to remind myself also that today was the 19th Frimaire, Year II of the Republic, and no longer the 9th of December, 1793.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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61eb6c6
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He is quite wrong," Robert would argue. "Every young woman should know how to comport herself, and how to mix in society." "Surely it depends upon the society?" I would reply, despite my anxiety to learn. "Take aunt Anne at Cherigny. Neither she, nor my uncle Viau, can sign their names properly, and they do very well as they are." "No doubt," said Robert, "and they will never move from Cherigny to the end of their days. You wait until I hav..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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2718a7c
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Meantime, the Declaration of the Rights of Man made all men equal, if it did not make them brothers, and within a week of its passing into law there were riots in Le Mans, and disturbances in Paris too, with the price of bread as high as it had been before, and unemployment rife. Bakers were blamed in every city for charging too dearly for their four-pound loaf, and they in turn put the blame upon the grain merchants; all men were at fault ..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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d0ba269
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The streets were narrow and evil-smelling, with a broad stream running down the center to carry the sewage, and beggars holding out their hands for alms. I remember my sudden feeling of fright when my father's back was turned to see to our luggage, and in a moment a woman had thrust her way between us, with two little barefooted children beside her, clamoring for money. When I drew back she shook her fist at me, and cursed. This was not the..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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17a945a
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I confess I found myself disenchanted. We hardly moved from this quarter, so crowded, so ill-smelling, among the poorest of the people, and when we did walk out it was only to call at the various warehouses where my father did his business. I thought our charcoal burners at home in the forest of la Pierre were rough, but they were gentle and courteous compared with the people in the streets of Paris, who jostled us without apology, staring ..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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a0dceae
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A wave of perfume came from these fine folk, a strange exotic scent like flowers no longer fresh, whose petals curl, and this stale richness somehow mingled with the drab dirt of those beside us, pressing forward even as we did, in a dumb desire to see the Queen.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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5b59043
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A master glass-maker must accustom himself to moving on. In old days they had always been wanderers, going from one forest to another, settling for a few years only.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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2aedbe8
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For myself, I could think of nothing more likely to cause panic and consternation among a crowd of women than to be shut up within a church without their menfolk, and to have the incessant clanging of that same church's bell sounding its warning from the belfry above their heads.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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0c9191b
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What is the truth?" I asked, in renewed agony of doubt--for had I, after all, done wrong in leaving my husband to his possible fate at le Chesne-Bidault? Were hordes of brigands even now setting fire to my home and everything I held dear? "The truth?" repeated Robert. "Nobody ever knows the truth in this world."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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d6d7372
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Take care," my father used to say, when first instructing Robert in the art of blowing glass. "Control is of supreme importance. One false movement and the expanding glass will be shattered." I remember the dawning excitement in my brother's eyes--could he, dared he, go beyond the limits prescribed? It was as though he longed for the explosion that would wreck his own first effort and his father's temper into the bargain. There comes this s..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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d05e1bc
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Slaughter on a scale far greater than any attempted by the Paris mob was the portion of those village patriots who dared to resist them. Women and children were not spared, men were thrown, while still alive, into ditches piled high with corpses. Clergy who had sworn the oath to the Constitution were tied to horses and dragged on the dusty roads to a terrible death.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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1e38cd7
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She does not know what is good for her, any more than all the so-called patriots in the country. Someone should have the nerve, and the power, to say 'Enough.' But they're like a lot of sheep without a shepherd.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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f10763d
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I believe you," I said. "And were there in those other diligences agents like yourself, paid either by Laclos for the duc d'Orleans, or by some other source, for the very purpose of spreading rumor, and so causing fear and panic through the country?" My brother smiled. He took up the knife and fork he had laid upon his plate. "My little sister," he said gently, "your travels have exhausted you, and you don't know what you are saying. I sugg..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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d673726
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My brothers, my husband, even Edme, my little sister, belonged to this moment, had waited for it, even, welcoming change as something they could themselves shape and possess, just as they molded glass to a new form. What they had been taught as children did not matter anymore. Those things were past and done with; only the future counted, a future which must be different in every way from what we had known. Why, then, did I lag behind? Why ..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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f7a51fc
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A mock trial was set in motion, and the mayor Montlibert forced to interrogate the prisoners. It was obvious, even to someone like myself who knew nothing of the law, that none of the men had done wrong. No arms had been found in the house. The men had no pretensions to being aristocrats. Monsieur Villette, who had presided over the proceedings in the church, spoke up in their defense.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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435cff2
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I am very different that that self who drove to Manderley for the first time, hopeful and eager, handicapped by a rather desperate gaucherie and filled with awn intense desire to please
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Daphne du Maurier |
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cf13348
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I wanted to go back again, to recapture the moment that had gone, and then it came to me that if we did it would not be the same.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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f631b70
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Naturally, at the outbreak of the Revolution he followed the example of the clergy and the aristocracy and emigrated to England with his young bride, my mother, and suffered much penury in consequence. His full name was Robert-Mathurin Busson du Maurier, and he died tragically and suddenly in 1802, after the Peace of Amiens, on returning to France in the hopes of restoring the family fortunes.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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59f03e4
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The glass world was unique, a law unto itself. It had its own rules and customs, and a separate language too, handed down not only from father to son but from master to apprentice, instituted heaven knows how many centuries ago wherever the glass-makers settled--in Normandy, in Lorraine, by the Loire--but always, naturally, by forests, for wood was the glass foundry's food, the mainstay of its existence.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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0c4fd6c
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She had grown older in four days, and the face that looked back at her from the spotted, cracked mirror was drawn and tired. There were dark rings beneath her eyes, and little hollows in her cheeks. Sleep came late to her at night, and she had no appetite for food. For the first time in her life she saw a resemblance between herself and her Aunt Patience.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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769c2f9
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When anyone talked about beauty in that way I knew they were doing it for effect. Perhaps she wanted me to think she was intelligent. She had only to open her mouth to show me she was not.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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e12579f
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It seemed strange that things could still be done to me after I was dead, that my body would perhaps be found and handled by people I should never know, that really a little life would go on about me which I should never feel.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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5c3d19c
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When the last toast had been given my mother had to take off her finery and put on a traveling dress, then mount one of the foundry wagons with the rest of them, and so drive away to her new home in the forest of Freteval.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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8cb828c
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Je me sentais vaguement epuisee et me demandai, un peu choquee de ma cruaute, pourquoi les personnes agees etaient si extenuantes. Pires que les jeunes enfants [...] car il fallait se montrer poli.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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4a05fa4
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panacea
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Daphne du Maurier |
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b5571dd
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All attempts on the part of her son to dissuade her were useless. She remained firm. "If this man is an impostor I shall know it directly I set eyes on him," she said. "If not, then I shall have done my duty."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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14b588a
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Acknowledgments I wish to thank the following for their great help in making known to me the many facts relating to my forebears, the Bussons, during the hundred years from 1747-1845, as well as the historical events in the departements of Sarthe and Loir-et-Cher during the revolutionary period:
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Daphne du Maurier |
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1263611
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kindness, and sincerity, and -- if I may say so -- modesty are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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e3b6ff3
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This astonished us as children, for we grew up beside the charcoal burners, called them by their Christian names, watched them at work, visited them in their log huts when they were ill; but to my mother, the bailiff's daughter from St. Christophe, gently nurtured, educated and well spoken, the rude shouts of these wild men of the woods at midnight must have sounded like devils in hell.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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4c96a0a
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We're off, Truda," called Mama. "If you bring the children along after the interval it will be time enough." She stood for a moment in the doorway, cool and detached, and she was dragging long white gloves onto her hands. Her smooth dark hair was parted in the middle, as always, with a low knot in the nape of her neck. To-night she wore the collar of pearls round her neck, because of the party afterwards, and pearl earrings"
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Daphne du Maurier |
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2693b8f
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The tie between mother and daughter was close, as it had been once, so many years ago, between Sophie Duval and her own mother Magdaleine. Sons, even if they lived under one's roof, had their own preoccupations, their business, their wives, political interests; but a daughter, even if she took to herself a husband as Zoe had done, and a very able doctor at that, remained always part of the mother, a nestling, intimate and confiding, a share..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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a32a34d
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Perhaps we shall not see each other again. I will write to you, though, and tell you, as best as I can, the story of your family. A glass-blower, remember, breathes life into a vessel, giving it shape and form and sometimes beauty; but he can, with that same breath, shatter and destroy it. If what I write displeases you, it will not matter. Throw my letters in the fire unread, and keep your illusions. For myself, I have always preferred to ..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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ae8cc35
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What a moment to bring a child into the world, that summer of '93, the first year of the Republic; with the Vendee in revolt, the country at war, the traitorous Girondins endeavoring to bring down the Convention, the patriot Marat to be assassinated by an hysterical girl, and the unhappy ex-Queen Marie Antoinette confined in the Temple and later guillotined
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Daphne du Maurier |
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677b610
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A lilac had mated with a copper beech, and to bind them yet more closely to one another the malevolent ivy, always an enemy to grace, had thrown her tendrils about the pair and made them prisoners.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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0a5545d
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It has always seemed to me significant that Robert's first memories, whenever he spoke of them, should not be of the farmhouse le Maurier, or of the lowing of cattle, the scratching of hens and other homely sounds, or even of the roar of the furnace chimney and the bustle of the glass-house; but always of an immense salon, so he described it, filled with mirrors and satin-covered chairs, with a harpsichord standing in one corner, and a fine..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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b201aa0
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If my mother had known what small seed of longing she was sowing in my brother's being, to develop into a folie de grandeur that nearly broke my father's heart, and certainly was partly responsible for his death, she would not have taken Robert so often to the chateau at Cherigny, to be fed and fondled by the marquise. She would have put him to play among the hens and pigs in the muddied farmyard of le Maurier.
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Daphne du Maurier |