Don Louis

“ And against his better judgment, Louis spent half an hour in hearing this idle youth a lesson, which, with a little extra trouble he might easily have mastered himself in three quarters of an hour.
“Thank you, Louis, you're a capital fellow; I know it now, don't I?”
“I think so,” replied Louis; “and now you must not talk to me.”
“What are you doing?” said Churchill, looking at his book; “oh, ‘Kenrick's Greek Exercises.’ If I can't tell you, I can help you to something that will. Here's a key.” ”

“ Trading expeditions came in from time to time from the civilized world, under escort supplied by Don Louis. They brought mining machinery, rifles, linens and silks, drugs, and even a few books for Doctor Javais. Occasionally, members or followers of such expeditions remained in the hillside town and established businesses there, or settled on the land, under the protection of the governor. Thus the population grew. But this was not its only manner of increase. Don Louis sometimes brought in a hundred or more new citizens at a time. ”

“ Louis, I'll make you a present of it, as I don't want it.”
“I don't want to buy any thing,” said Louis.
“Rubbish!” cried Frank. “Every one does. Don't be stingy.” And so Louis allowed himself to be pushed and pulled into the crowd, and bought something he would much rather have been without, because he found it inconvenient to say no.
The two upper classes were privileged to use the largest of the class-rooms as their sitting-room in the evenings; and here Reginald introduced his brother after tea; and, when he had shown him his lessons, began to prepare his own. ”

“ But Louis stopped to hear no more. Rushing out, bareheaded as he was, he dashed down the street to the first corner, where he leaped into a cab, crying: "Twenty francs if you take me to the Versailles station at breakneck speed—and from there somewhere else—I don't know where; but in mercy, go!"
"Which side of the river, monsieur," asked the coachman, as he lashed his horse. ”

“ Not that Louis himself acts any differently. He's [Pg 179] exactly the same as ever, of course, and he's said a dozen times in the course of the last week:
"What's come over you girls, anyway? You're all the time gazing at me with eyes as big as dinner-plates, and you act so queerly and are so absent-minded that I don't know you! Has a realization of the fact that I hope some day to be a full-fledged aviator had such a doleful effect on you as all that? You haven't been the same since that day. ”

“ Casson, how can you think such a thing of me!” exclaimed Louis, shrinking back.
The exclamation was so loud that Casson laid his hand upon his mouth with a muttered angry ejaculation.
“One would think I had spoken of breaking open a house,” said Casson.
“It's stealing,” said Louis, in a tone of anger.
“Nonsense.”
“I tell you, Casson, it is—don't talk to me any more about it—I wish I had never known you!”
Casson burst out laughing. “What a ninny you are!” he exclaimed. “You are as easily frightened as a bird with a pop-gun. ”

“ As he rushed out of the playground gates, bat in hand, accompanied by Meredith, he overtook his brother, who had discovered a poem unknown to him in Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, and was anticipating a pleasant mental feast in its perusal.
“Louis, you lazy fellow,” cried Reginald, good-temperedly, “you shan't read this fine afternoon—come, join us.”
“I don't play cricket, I have not learned,” replied Louis.
“And you never will,” rejoined Reginald, “if you don't make a beginning: I'll teach you—now put away that stupid book.” ”

“ It's by far the most interesting of the three,—a long, rambling colonial farmhouse, built, they say, way back in seventeen hundred and something. It has the most fascinating additions in all directions from the main part, and queer little back stairways and old slave quarters, and I don't know what else. But the [Pg 11] people who live in it are the interesting part.
To begin with, there's Louis. His whole name is Louis Charles Durant. He is seventeen and goes to high school in Bridgeton with us. We have known him all our lives, and he's the nicest, jolliest boy we know. ”

“ Do you know what you'll get if you give it back?”
“Whatever happens,” said Louis, “I feel I have done wrong—wrong in listening to you, too, Casson. Oh, if ever it please God to make me happy again, I hope I shall be more careful! I have been afraid to do right—I am afraid to think of all that has happened lately.”
“I always thought you were a canting hypocrite,” said Casson, sneeringly. “I never see that you religious people do any better than any one else. Go and get a thrashing, as you deserve, for your cowardice, only don't tell any lies about me. ”

“ Louis blushed, and felt rather foolish, certainly not wholly insensible to the injudicious hint.
“Only Fred Salisbury is so different: he is not elegant, and yet he is not awkward; he is rough and ready, and says all kinds of vulgar things. He is very much liked among us, but I don't think Trevannion is, though he gets his own way a great deal: he thinks nobody is equal to himself, I know, but I am sure he is not a favorite.” ”

“ They guard him as if he weren't able to take care of himself any more than a baby. They don't let him have half the [Pg 14] liberty and fun that ordinary boys have. Lots of mothers and fathers, who love their children to distraction, aren't half as fussy and concerned about them as these two people are about a boy who isn't even a relative. It makes Louis awfully annoyed, for he hates like anything to be coddled. Once he fell out of an apple-tree and broke a rib, and they nearly went wild. He had a fever that night and lay in a sort of stupor. ”

“ I don't wonder Fudge was in such a passion.”
Louis was very glad when bed-time came, and he could hide his tears and misery under the bed-clothes. Reginald had been too busy to notice that any thing was the matter with him; but Hamilton, occupied as he was, had seen it, though Louis had kept out of his way as much as possible. He dared not tell Reginald his trouble; and he felt afraid to pray—he did not remember that, though our Heavenly Father knows all our thoughts and wants, He requires that all our care and sin should be poured out before Him. The Christian does not love sin ”

“ Dr. Wilkinson and all the boys are so kind to me this half. It is so different from the first quarter spent at school.”
“They are kind, are they? Well, I dare say; they couldn't help it, I'm sure,” replied Mrs. Paget. “I suppose you will have the medal again this half year. I am sure you ought to have it to make up.”
“Oh, but I shouldn't have it to make up for last half, ma'am,” said Louis, smiling.
“But you will get it, I dare say,” said the lady.
“I don't know,” said Louis; “perhaps—I think I have a very good chance yet, but we never can tell exactly what Dr. Wilkinson thinks about us. ”

“ Forgetting about the defense mech was enough for one case.
So I ordered breakfast brought up to the room. While I was waiting, and since I was sitting near it anyway, I flicked the TV switch and tuned in on the morning's news. Nothing earthshaking: a factory explosion in St. Louis; political unrest in India; death of a Vegan millionaire; speech in The World Council by Delegate Machavowski of Eurasia in support of the Bagley-Dalton bill to establish a yearly immigration quota of ten thousand from all planets, one thousand from Mars; protest reply by a Martian sociologist at Yale ”

“ He was not only a great giver of alms and founder of churches, monasteries, and hospitals. He daily fed the poor at his table, and visited the sick and wretched at their own abodes. He washed the feet of repulsive beggars and cripples. He did not shrink from contact with the lepers. His simple enthusiasm for good works powerfully affected the rough barons with whom he was brought into contact. ‘To see or hear him,’ we are told, ‘brought comfort and calm to the most troubled spirit.’
With all his piety and simplicity, there was nothing weak or puerile in Louis’ character. ”

“ A roar of applause shook the room, and drowned the reverberations of that mighty voice—Danton's voice, which shook not only the Mountain on which he stood, and from which he fell, but France beyond and Europe across her frontiers. It echoes still, and comes to us across the years with all the man's audacious force, his pride of patriotism, and overwhelming energy! raised it now, and beckoning for silence——
"We are all agreed," he cried, "Louis is guilty, and Louis must die. If he lives, there is not a life safe in all France. ”

“ By the beauty of conduct Divine grace alone had enabled him to observe, he now won the regard of the majority of his school-fellows; and no one meddled with him or his opinions. He was loved by many; liked by most, and unmolested by the rest. We are told, “When a man's ways please the Lord, even his enemies are at peace with him;”and this was Louis' case. If a few remarks were now and then made on the singularity and stiffness of his notions, the countenance of the seniors, and the general estimation in which he was held, prevented any annoyance or interference. ”

“ His fine dark eyes were bright, clear, almost piercing; his upper lip was shaded by a black mustache, but it did not conceal its scornful upward curve. Pride and passion, genius and unbending will were written in every lineament of that irresistibly handsome face; yet there was at times a winning softness in it, particularly when he smiled. He still bore a strong likeness to his dead father, save that Louis was much handsomer. There was something grand and noble in his tall yet slight figure, mingled with an ease and grace of manner that bespoke his acquaintance with polished society. ”

“ Who "he" was, or why his Aunt Yvonne and his Uncle Jean (as he calls them) should allude to him as "Monsieur Louis," was something Louis couldn't understand. And somehow, when he was better, he didn't like to ask.
They have taught him French, and with them he always has to speak that language. But he doesn't like it, because he says he's [Pg 15] an American citizen and would rather talk "United States" than anything else. He's awfully patriotic and proud of this country, and he can't understand why this should bother Mr. and Miss Meadows. But it somehow does. ”

“ The prompt reply of Madame Roland displayed even more than her [Pg 129] characteristic sagacity. "If Louis is sincerely a friend of the Constitution, he must be virtuous beyond the common race of mortals. Mistrust your own virtue, M. Roland. You are only an honest countryman wandering amid a crowd of courtiers—virtue in danger amid a myriad of vices. They speak our language; we do not know theirs. No! Louis can not love the chains that fetter him. He may feign to caress them. He thinks only of how he can spurn them. ”

“ He returned home about midnight, and his father, convinced by the gloomy expression of his son's countenance that he could not have seen the girl and discovered the deception that had been practised upon both of them, again proposed that they should leave for Dreux the next morning, but Louis replied that he desired more time for reflection before taking this important step, and threw himself despairingly on his pallet. ”

“ It was he alone that Heaven caused to be born for the happiness of my life, and it is he that an unjust Heaven makes impossible for me to have. From the first time that he appeared in my father's court, the impression which he produced on me was such that it will never disappear from my heart. Louis has everything that I want in a man—that noble pride which shines in his face—that loyal and chivalrous character which would cause him to undergo a thousand perils for the one he loves ”

“ Louis fully responded to the touch, and without a notion that he was showing himself to the best advantage, he yielded to the pleasure, and for once proved of what he was capable—revealing unawares an unusual amount of intelligence and observation, and great power of expression. Not even his aunt had ever seen him appear so much like a superior man, and the only alloy was his father's, ill-repressed dread lest he should fall on dangerous ground, and commit himself either to his wildly philanthropical or extravagantly monarchical views, whichever might happen to be in the ascendant. ”

“ You only think about that and do it at once; and because I have so many friends, and even care about pleasing those I do not like, I am always getting into scrapes, and always doing wrong. I think there never was anybody so bad as I am. I wish papa hadn't sent me to school.”
“I like you very much,” said Clifton; “and I am sure you have done me good—on Sunday, at least.”
“Ah, it is much easier to know and talk of what is right than to do it,” replied Louis, sighing very deeply. “Oh, domum, dulce domum! But there is Reginald, and I must go and ask him a question.” ”

“ He may mentally put himself in the position of the delinquent, and considering how he would wish to be treated, act accordingly.
Every thing seemed to go wrong with Louis that day. The Herodotus that Hamilton was to have heard, was scarcely looked at; and Louis lost two or three places in his class. Hamilton never noticed him, and even Reginald was offended with him. Louis tried to brave it out, and sung in a low tone, whistled, and finally, when he was roughly desired to be quiet, walked into the school-room, and finished his evening with Casson and Churchill. ”

“ Louis is not much on the strong-arm work, but he has desperate determination, and if he went there to get that money—and if Mr Gleason wouldn’t give it to him—let me see—I suppose Gleason must have said that his condition was your acceptance of his suit!”
“I suppose so,” Phyllis agreed. “He knew how I love Louis, and he often tried to get him to persuade me to do various things. Louis is my idol. I’ve always adored him. I really brought him up, for mother died when he was so little. We’re far closer to one another than most brothers and sisters. ”