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Madame de Treymes |
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Edith Wharton's 1907 novella explores the milieu of Americans living abroad in Paris. New Yorker John Durham travels to Paris to woo an old flame, Fanny Frisbee, now the Marquis de Malrive. Fanny is separated from her husband and wants to marry John and return to America, but she doubts whether her Catholic husband will grant her a divorce. When John meets Fanny's sister-in-law, the enigmatic Madame de Treymes, he hopes she may be able to help them in their quest for happiness. (Introduction by Elizabeth Klett)
BY EDITH WHARTON
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... Continue reading book >>
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