Another waking dream...
She is sowing with artful dedication the golden lily on the pinafore. There is in her gesture something absently methodical, her hand is delicate and tender, yet precise for every time she pinches the cloth.
The ivory timble on her hand is almost only decorative. Four years of training, and she is embroidering like she was born with a needle in hand, with both taste and skill. She looks out the window a moment, as she changes her thread, before she starts on the cross, and finds her eyes stray once more to the towers of Hautecoeur.
She allows herself a daydream, gentle and simple, one of love and of another life, a dream in which a prince will take her and love her after her life of labors. However, the dream ends as her tutor enters and clears her throat, before she sits beside her with a trestle of her own.
“Dreaming again, Angélique?” Hubertine’s voice is gently scolding, but the warning cannot be ignored.
“Oh, just a little,” the girl replies enthusiastically, before she gets back to her work with renewed focus.
Leaning over the trestle, her blond hair falls loosely over her shoulder, and her violet eyes squint a little in the waning light. She has a graceful, swanlike neck and a delicate waist, but she doesn't know how beautiful she is.
All she thinks of is the Golden Legend, the dreams it brings her as she sits alone in her whitewashed, monastic room, and the beautiful patterns she draws. Her eyes are on her work, and she hasn’t noticed yet that she no longer is in Beaumont, in the quaint little house in the cathedral’s shadow.
Presenting Angélique-Marie, from Émile Zola's novel Le rêve (The Dream) , a sixteen year-old orphan, embroidery apprentice and ingénue, taken from chapter 3 or thereabouts. She's from 19th Century France.
The ivory timble on her hand is almost only decorative. Four years of training, and she is embroidering like she was born with a needle in hand, with both taste and skill. She looks out the window a moment, as she changes her thread, before she starts on the cross, and finds her eyes stray once more to the towers of Hautecoeur.
She allows herself a daydream, gentle and simple, one of love and of another life, a dream in which a prince will take her and love her after her life of labors. However, the dream ends as her tutor enters and clears her throat, before she sits beside her with a trestle of her own.
“Dreaming again, Angélique?” Hubertine’s voice is gently scolding, but the warning cannot be ignored.
“Oh, just a little,” the girl replies enthusiastically, before she gets back to her work with renewed focus.
Leaning over the trestle, her blond hair falls loosely over her shoulder, and her violet eyes squint a little in the waning light. She has a graceful, swanlike neck and a delicate waist, but she doesn't know how beautiful she is.
All she thinks of is the Golden Legend, the dreams it brings her as she sits alone in her whitewashed, monastic room, and the beautiful patterns she draws. Her eyes are on her work, and she hasn’t noticed yet that she no longer is in Beaumont, in the quaint little house in the cathedral’s shadow.
Presenting Angélique-Marie, from Émile Zola's novel Le rêve (The Dream) , a sixteen year-old orphan, embroidery apprentice and ingénue, taken from chapter 3 or thereabouts. She's from 19th Century France.