The Red Carnation E-Book

Baroness Emmuska Orczy

• Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 26

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The Red Carnation is a poignant and atmospheric tale that reveals Baroness Orczy's early gift for romance and suspense. Set against the turbulent backdrop of Revolutionary France, the story follows a young aristocrat whose fate becomes entwined with a single, symbolic flower — the red carnation. In a world where love is as fragile as it is dangerous, the bloom becomes a token of courage, passion, and sacrifice, standing out vividly against the terror of the guillotine. Short but powerful, this story brims with Orczy's hallmark blend of romance, danger, and historical atmosphere, foreshadowing the timeless appeal of her later masterpiece, The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Leseprobe

The Red Carnation

A Short Story

By: Baroness Emmuska ORCZY

Edited by: Rafat Allam

Copyright © 2025 by Al-Mashreq eBookstore

First published in Pearson’s Magazine, June 1898

No part of this publication may be reproduced whole or in part in any form without the prior written permission of the author

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

The Red Carnation

1

2

3

4

5

Landmarks

Table of Contents

Cover

1

Madame Olga Borgensky would never, I am sure, of her own accord, have resumed her duties as political agent to the Russian Government.

When, two years ago, she had married Eugen Borgensky, a Pole, she had made both to herself and to him a solemn promise to renounce once for all a métier which, after all, most honest-minded persons would undoubtedly call that of a spy. And when, on the occasion of His Imperial Majesty the Tsar’s visit to Vienna, Count Gulohoff approached her on the subject of her returning to the service of her country, she gave him a most emphatic refusal. I have it on the surest authority that this refusal annoyed and disappointed Count Gulohoff very considerably. He was at the time head of the third section of the Russian police, and had been specially ordered to watch over his Imperial master during the latter’s stay in Vienna, and there was in his mind a suspicion, almost amounting to a certainty, that some plot was being brewed by the young Poles—chiefly wealthy and of noble parentage—who lived in Vienna, and had already given the home government one or two unpleasant nuts to crack.

Madame Olga Borgensky was just the person to help him to discover the headquarters of these young fire-eaters—she went everywhere, knew everybody—and if Count Gulohoff could have succeeded in dispatching one or two of them to cool in Siberia, he certainly would have been happier. But Madame Borgensky was obdurate—at any rate, at first.

During the early part of the evening at Princess Leminoff’s ball, the indefatigable and diplomatic Count Gulohoff had made many an attack on her firmness of purpose, but she had an army of excuses and reasons at her command, and yet one little incident caused her suddenly to change her resolution.