The country doctor / by Honoré de Balzac.

  • Honoré de Balzac
Date:
[1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The country doctor / by Honoré de Balzac. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    as vaporous as the mists whose fleecy shreds were torn upon them. At every moment the country-side varied in aspect and the sky in light, the mountains changed color, the slopes their shades, the valleys their forms,—multiplied images which unexpected oppositions, whether it was a ray of sun traversing the tree-trunks, whether a natural clearing or some fallen rocks, rendered delightful to the eye in the midst of the silence, in the season when everything is young, when the sun illumines a pure sky. In short, it was a beautiful country, it was France! A man of tall stature, the traveller was dressed completely in blue cloth as carefully brushed as was probably every morning the glossy coat of his horse, on which he sat, firm and upright, like an old cavalry officer. If, indeed, his black cravat and his doe-skin gloves, the pistols which filled his holster and the portmanteau well strapped on his horse’s croup, had not indicated the soldier, his embrowned countenance pitted by the small-pox, but with regular features and characterized by an apparent indifference, his de- cided manner, the security of his glance, the carriage of his head, everything would have betrayed those regimental habits of which it is impossible for the soldier ever to divest himself, even after he has re- turned to domestic life. Any other would have mar- velled at the beauties of this Alpine nature, so smiling where it opens into the great valleys of France; but the officer, who had doubtless traversed those coun- tries into which the French armies were transported by the imperial wars, enjoyed this landscape without
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