Raoul

“ One man went down with a hiss and a cough, the other sprang back yelling for help. Raoul tore Elsa from the Dutchman's arms, cast her over his shoulder and ran. And the Dutchman flung Martha at the Walloon and lumbered after him.
Tents and men stood out black against the yellow glare and the light spread over the plain, but beneath the long dikes the mist loomed in darker shadow. Raoul mounted and made for the blackness of it, spurring, ventre à terre. ”

“ Dear friend, at Raoul's age the heart is so expansive that it must encircle one object or another, fancied or real. Well, his love is half real, half fanciful. She is the prettiest little creature in the world, with flaxen hair, blue eyes, -- at once saucy and languishing. ”

“ A scream, a rush, a splash, the bubble of foam bells on the dull, slimy moat, and the white waif is gone for ever!
“My Raoul!” is whispered in the ringing ears of the Laird of Baikie, as he closes his eyes by the bright sparkling stream.
But Sir Raoul recovers, stiff, sore, and strange: sunshine and silence, the firm castle walls, the restless Isla water, an open empty window, before him. He comprehends with an awful shock; he waits a moment; he crawls along, as other poor victims have done after him; he sees the weeds on the moat broken and streaked as the Northern lights in a winter sky ”

“ Raoul, whose head dropped like a blossom cut down by the reaper, made an almost superhuman effort to smile, as he replied with the greatest gentleness: “I have had the honor of telling your royal highness that I am absolutely ignorant of everything, that I am a poor unremembered outcast, who has this moment arrived from England. There have rolled so many stormy waves between myself and those I left behind me here, that the rumor of none of the circumstances your highness refers to, has been able to reach me.” ”

“ The man and the other woman started forward crying "Mistress! Mistress!" but she thrust a silken purse into Raoul's hand. Raoul dandled it and was shrugging his shoulders at the weight of it when:
"I trust you, sir," she said.
"'Tis foolish in you, my fair," Raoul laughed.
"I trust you," she said again.
Raoul stood up in his stirrups and surveyed circumstances. The Spaniards were close now and the little willow clump could not avail to hide them. The only hope was the falling twilight and the mist. "Come!" said Raoul and led on toward the shadow of the long dike. ”

“ At four o’clock Raoul came, and was with me for an hour. Each of us tried to cheer the other. I did all I could to make him hope that even yet he would have news of the brocade bag and its contents. He, thinking me ill and tired out, did all he could to persuade me that he was not miserable with anxiety. At least, he was no longer jealous of Godensky or of any man, and was humbly repentant for his suspicions of me the night before. When Raoul is repentant, and wishes to atone for something that he has done, he is enchanting. There was never a man like him. ”

“ Raoul sat thinking.
"Always," says he in that History of Myself, "always I had an eye and a mind for ground. Once seen I knew it forever, or by day or by night." He had, in fact, a dog's sense of place and direction. Wrapped in the wet darkness, he saw clear all around him, the line of poplars close by, the willow clump a gunshot off, the dikes and the sluggish river. He knew the oblong camp, the post of the cavalry on either horn, the park of the guns and powder in the midst of the rearward line.
At last Raoul gathered up his reins and rode down to Taddeo's dead company. ”

“ He whose intellect was thus supreme, Raoul, was the actual sovereign; the other, nothing but a phantom to whom he lent a soul; and yet, so powerful is majesty amongst us, this man has not even the honor of a tomb at the feet of him in whose service his life was worn away. Remember, Raoul, this! If Richelieu made the king, by comparison, seem small, he made royalty great. ”

“ The girl's aspen bosom, the gray face and the eyes that stabbed—perhaps they were with him there in the mist, but Raoul was not the man to go to death for a stray girl's shame. One fancies that if Don Julian had but given him those fifty ducats Raoul would have ridden happily off, a paid scoundrel. At least Raoul himself thanks God after his own fashion that Don Julian denied him. "Had he paid me, my life had never begun. And so my salutes to Don Julian—who is where he is—" says Raoul. Don Julian would give nothing; a man owed it to himself to take. ”

“ In the gathering darkness Raoul saw, just emerging from the cleft in the rocks, the huge figure of a man, dressed, as all travelers are in the mountains, in wide sombrero, capacious ruana, great hair-covered leggings reaching to the waist, his spurred heels clattering on the [86] stones as he walked towards them. ”

“ Raoul, learn how to distinguish the king from royalty; the king is but a man; royalty is the gift of God. Whenever you hesitate as to whom you ought to serve, abandon the exterior, the material appearance for the invisible principle, for the invisible principle is everything. Raoul, I seem to read your future destiny as through a cloud. It will be happier, I think, than ours has been. Different in your fate from us, you will have a king without a minister, whom you may serve, love, respect. ”

“ Raoul's soul was agitated by novel sensations.
"Do thy priests fancy that they who have known and loved each other in this life," he asked, "will know and love each other in that which they fancy is to come?"
"The life that is to come, Raoul, is one all love, or one all hatred. That we may know each other I try to hope; nor do I see any reason for disbelieving it. My uncle is of opinion it must be so."
"Thy uncle, Ghita? What, Carlo Giuntotardi--he who seemeth never to think of things around him--doth a mind like his dwell on thoughts as remote and sublime as this?" ”

“ His wisdom was proven. Leyden was open to the foe. An army might have marched through the breach.
But the army lay wearied out with no heart in it at The Hague.
Raoul slapped Valdez's florins in his breeches, and laughed and looked and laughed. He conceived himself justified to God and man. Then he turned westward. Driven by the great wind, swollen by the rain, the waters lay close below him. Boisot's boats were moving hither and thither sounding. Raoul waved his hat to them and shouted.
Loaded with thanks and kindly promises, Raoul was borne to a grand chamber in the burgomaster's house. ”

“ Should your hand still be too weak to use this sword, Raoul, so much the better. You will have the more time to learn to draw it only when it ought to be used."
"Sir," replied Raoul, putting the sword to his lips as he received it from the count, "I owe you everything and yet this sword is the most precious gift you have yet made me. I will wear it, I swear to you, as a grateful man should do."
"'Tis well; arise, vicomte, embrace me."
Raoul arose and threw himself with emotion into the count's arms. ”

“ It is quite as necessary, my dear son, that a young man should not undervalue himself, as that he should not think of his deserts too highly. Now that you have some merits is certain—for the rest I desire frankness of you just now, and beg that you will speak out plainly. I think you love this young girl. Is it not so, Raoul?"
"I do love, sir, very dearly; with my whole heart and spirit."
"And do you feel sure that this is not a mere transient liking—that it will last, Raoul?"
"So long as life lasts in my heart, so long will my love for her last, my father." ”

“ And he grasped a beautiful dagger, the handle of which was inlaid with precious stones; and which he half drew from his breast.
Raoul thrust his hand aside. “Be careful what you do,” he said; “if you do not kill yourself, you commit a ridiculous action; and if you were to kill yourself, you sprinkle blood upon the nuptial robe of the princess of England.” ”

“ What wounded her—as a betrayal of her good faith and an insult to her love—was this pretended absence, during which Raoul, forgetting the Rue du Temps-Perdu, had left his little room solitary, to mix in the fetes at Sceaux. Thus Raoul had had but an instant's caprice for her, sufficient to induce him to pass a week or two in an attic, but he had soon got tired of this life: then he had invented the pretext of a journey, declaring that it was a misfortune; but none of this was true. Raoul had never quitted Paris—or, if he had, his first visit had not been to the Rue du Temps-Perdu. ”

“ Madame La Tour greatly enjoyed Raoul's relation of his Boston experience.
"You see, virtue is not always merely its own reward," she said, smiling proudly upon her nephew. "It is sometimes well rewarded in other ways. Be ever ready to champion the weak and the innocent, Raoul. They are God's children, and you are doing His work when you take their part against the wicked and cruel people, of which, alas! there seems to be too many in this world." ”

“ The tone was the same to which Raoul had always submitted, but now he burst forth in open rebellion: "Grandfather, do not goad me too far. You have always reproached me with having my mother's blood in my veins, and you are right. All that I knew of happiness and freedom in the sunny days of my youth belonged to France, and there alone does life seem to me really worth the living. Here, in cold, gray Germany, I have never felt at home. Every joy is doled out to me grudgingly here; the phantom of duty is always held up to me. ”

“ The golden strain of Polynesia betrayed itself in the sun-gilt of his fair skin and cast up golden sheens and lights through the glimmering blue of his eyes. Raoul he was, Alexandré Raoul, youngest son of Marie Raoul, the wealthy quarter-caste, who owned and managed half a dozen trading schooners similar to the Aorai. Across an eddy just outside the entrance, and in and through and over a boiling tide-rip, the boat fought its way to the mirrored calm of the lagoon. Young Raoul leaped out upon the white sand and shook hands with a tall native. ”

“ That partly cleared the king's muddy mind and he lurched to an upright position and began to take notice.
"You sold Greece to the boche," continued Raoul in his serene, even voice, toying idly with his pistols. "What else you did—what else you are—is a trifle too vile to repeat aloud——"
He turned and looked at the Tzar of all the Bulgars whose ungainly bulk as he sat on his chair was now agitated by visible tremors:
"Murderer and coward," mused Raoul aloud. "Every time you hire your gun-men to kill an enemy you hurry away to establish an alibi, don't you? ”

“ With these flung about him he rode off, the scattered, riderless horses of Taddeo's men neighing at him out of the mist. And then something bulky leaped at him, big hands gripped his bridle arm, a great weight dragged him down. "Butcher, I have you now," growled a hoarse Dutch voice.
"I was looking for you," said Raoul, placidly, as he put his dagger to the man's throat and let him feel the point of it. "Do not make me kill you." ”

“ Raoul had the grand air of their father: a tall man was always so much more impressive. For the rest, it was fully apparent that the dear fellow’s abominable wife had been at her mischief-making.
“Monsieur the Duke,” Raoul began, “this encounter is indeed fortunate.”
“To encounter Monsieur the Chevalier,” replied Florian, with quite as sweet a stateliness, but feeling rather like a bantam cock beside this big Raoul, “is always a privilege.” ”

“ Oh, you are a warm man, a wily soul. No Raoul of any world will ever come over you, eh, burgess?" Raoul nudged his ribs.
The alderman looked austere a moment. Then he grinned. With two knowing nods they parted.
Raoul turned down a lane to the quay, and beckoned to his page. She came, and he took her arm, but she would not look at him. Raoul peeped under the slouched hat.
"Tears? Mordieu, remember you are a man!"
"I—I—oh, forgive me! I thought—I thought you were going to give me up—and indeed I never felt so much a woman."
"There is one who will not complain," said Raoul. ”

“ So handsome a face and manly a figure could belong only to a noble character.
Although Raoul said that he was twenty-four, he appeared to be not more than twenty. He had a superb figure, well knit and supple; a beautiful white brow, shaded by soft chestnut curly hair, soft blue eyes which beamed with frankness.
His first impulse was to throw himself into Prosper’s arms.
“My poor, dear friend!” he said, “my poor Prosper!”
But beneath these affectionate demonstrations there was a certain constraint, which, if it escaped the cashier, was noticed by M. Verduret. ”

“ When the passage was once more deserted, he crossed it, opened the door of the dressing-room, went in and shut the door. He found himself in absolute darkness. The gas had been turned out.
"There is some one here!", said Raoul, with his back against the closed door, in a quivering voice. "What are you hiding for?"
All was darkness and silence. Raoul heard only the sound of his own breathing. He quite failed to see that the indiscretion of his conduct was exceeding all bounds.
"You shan't leave this until I let you!", he exclaimed. "If you don't answer, you are a coward! But I'll expose you!" ”

“ Raoul is weak, charming and evil. Michael has the world against him and conquers. Raoul has the world on his side and loses. The whole story is full of movement and life, and the psychology of the characters is displayed by action not by analysis, by deeds not by description. Though there are three long volumes, we do not tire of the tale. It has truth, passion and power, and there are no better things than these in fiction. ”