Madame de Treymes
()
About this ebook
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton was born in 1862 to a prominent and wealthy New York family. In 1885 she married Boston socialite 'Teddy' Wharton but the marriage was unhappy and they divorced in 1913. The couple travelled frequently to Europe and settled in France, where Wharton stayed until her death in 1937. Her first major novel was The House of Mirth (1905); many short stories, travel books, memoirs and novels followed, including Ethan Frome (1911) and The Reef (1912). She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature with The Age of Innocence (1920) and she was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was also decorated for her humanitarian work during the First World War.
Read more from Edith Wharton
The Touchstone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glimpses of the Moon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Children Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Custom of the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mother's Recompense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Innocence Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Writing of Fiction: The Classic Guide to the Art of the Short Story and the Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoman Fever and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Son at the Front Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Reef Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Old Maid: The 'Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roman Fever: Short Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Backward Glance: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Works of Edith Wharton. Illustrated: The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome and others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings50 Feminist Masterpieces you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Greatest American Short Stories: 50+ Classics of American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Custom of the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Short Stories Of Edith Wharton - Volume I: Madame de Treymes & Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Italian Villas and Their Gardens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Morocco Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In Morocco Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to Madame de Treymes
Related ebooks
Madame de Treymes Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Madame De Treymes (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Short Stories Of Edith Wharton - Volume I: Madame de Treymes & Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Reef Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Top 10 Short Stories - The 19th Century - The American Women Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Uttermost Farthing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnother Study of Woman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rescue Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNight and Day Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rosary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Reef by Edith Wharton - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMadame de Treymes and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Top 10 Short Stories - The 19th Century - The Women Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCamille: The Lady of the Camellias Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Christmas Stories of All Time (Illustrated Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Note in Music: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Fluttered Dovecote Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwo banks of the Seine (Les Deux Rives) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCaught In The Net Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Pair of Blue Eyes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Amaury Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOrlando, A Biography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPeg Woffington Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wind in His Heart Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Children Are Bored on Sunday: Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsContact: And Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCouching at the Door Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Henry James Short Stories Volume 8 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings“Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Line of Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Literary Fiction For You
Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prophet Song: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Read with Jenna Pick Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Queen's Gambit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Handmaid's Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tender Is the Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lagos Wife: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Ugly and Wonderful Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden (Original Classic Edition) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anna Karenina: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Woman in the Room: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Madame de Treymes
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Madame de Treymes - Edith Wharton
MADAME DE TREYMES
..................
Edith Wharton
KYPROS PRESS
Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please consider sharing the good word(s) by leaving a review, or connect with the author.
This book is a work of fiction; its contents are wholly imagined.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2015 by Edith Wharton
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Madame De Treymes
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
MADAME DE TREYMES
..................
I
..................
JOHN DURHAM, WHILE HE WAITED for Madame de Malrive to draw on her gloves, stood in the hotel doorway looking out across the Rue de Rivoli at the afternoon brightness of the Tuileries gardens.
His European visits were infrequent enough to have kept unimpaired the freshness of his eye, and he was always struck anew by the vast and consummately ordered spectacle of Paris: by its look of having been boldly and deliberately planned as a background for the enjoyment of life, instead of being forced into grudging concessions to the festive instincts, or barricading itself against them in unenlightened ugliness, like his own lamentable New York.
But to-day, if the scene had never presented itself more alluringly, in that moist spring bloom between showers, when the horse-chestnuts dome themselves in unreal green against a gauzy sky, and the very dust of the pavement seems the fragrance of lilac made visible—to-day for the first time the sense of a personal stake in it all, of having to reckon individually with its effects and influences, kept Durham from an unrestrained yielding to the spell. Paris might still be—to the unimplicated it doubtless still was—the most beautiful city in the world; but whether it were the most lovable or the most detestable depended for him, in the last analysis, on the buttoning of the white glove over which Fanny de Malrive still lingered.
The mere fact of her having forgotten to draw on her gloves as they were descending in the hotel lift from his mother’s drawing-room was, in this connection, charged with significance to Durham. She was the kind of woman who always presents herself to the mind’s eye as completely equipped, as made up of exquisitely cared for and finely-related details; and that the heat of her parting with his family should have left her unconscious that she was emerging gloveless into Paris, seemed, on the whole, to speak hopefully for Durham’s future opinion of the city.
Even now, he could detect a certain confusion, a desire to draw breath and catch up with life, in the way she dawdled over the last buttons in the dimness of the porte-cochere, while her footman, outside, hung on her retarded signal.
When at length they emerged, it was to learn from that functionary that Madame la Marquise’s carriage had been obliged to yield its place at the door, but was at the moment in the act of regaining it. Madame de Malrive cut the explanation short. I shall walk home. The carriage this evening at eight.
As the footman turned away, she raised her eyes for the first time to Durham’s.
Will you walk with me? Let us cross the Tuileries. I should like to sit a moment on the terrace.
She spoke quite easily and naturally, as if it were the most commonplace thing in the world for them to be straying afoot together over Paris; but even his vague knowledge of the world she lived in—a knowledge mainly acquired through the perusal of yellow-backed fiction—gave a thrilling significance to her naturalness. Durham, indeed, was beginning to find that one of the charms of a sophisticated society is that it lends point and perspective to the slightest contact between the sexes. If, in the old unrestricted New York days, Fanny Frisbee, from a brown stone door-step, had proposed that they should take a walk in the Park, the idea would have presented itself to her companion as agreeable but unimportant; whereas Fanny de Malrive’s suggestion that they should stroll across the Tuileries was obviously fraught with unspecified possibilities.
He was so throbbing with the sense of these possibilities that he walked beside her without speaking down the length of the wide alley which follows the line of the Rue de Rivoli, suffering her even, when they reached its farthest end, to direct him in silence up the steps to the terrace of the Feuillants. For, after all, the possibilities were double-faced, and her bold departure from custom might simply mean that what she had to say was so dreadful that it needed all the tenderest mitigation of circumstance.
There was apparently nothing embarrassing to her in his silence: it was a part of her long European discipline that she had learned to manage pauses with ease. In her Frisbee days she might have packed this one with a random fluency; now she was content to let it widen slowly before them like the spacious prospect opening at their feet. The complicated beauty of this prospect, as they moved toward it between the symmetrically clipped limes of the lateral terrace, touched him anew through her nearness, as with the hint of some vast impersonal power, controlling and regulating her life in ways he could not guess, putting between himself and her the whole width of the civilization into which her marriage had absorbed her.