Excerpt from La Belle Marie, Vol. 1 of 2: A Romance Most of the houses in the upper village were very old, and many of them tottering to their fall; but, close to the water, a new and more neatly-finished building had lately been erected. Near this spot a crowd of men and boys were collected, on a stormy evening of the month of April, looking at the workmen engaged in setting up the sign denoting that the place was intended for the entertain ment of the public. The new inn was not popular at present, but its merits had not yet been tested. Its situation was certainly more convenient than that of the dilapidated, in commodious structure on the top of the hill, which had hitherto satisfied the townspeople and fishermen of Lezant, and would still have gained their suffrages, if the matter had been put to the vote. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.