Raul

“ He has starred in many of Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival productions, and has received three Tony nominations for his dramatic and musical roles on Broadway.
He sips a glass of apricot juice while a makeup artist brushes his jet black hair straight back and starts to darken his eyes. Removing his shoes, Raul tells all sorts of little anecdotes about his life as the famous Count.
"I usually eat very little during the day. I go to sleep at about five, sometimes six. Maybe I'm getting a Dracula schedule," he says with a laugh. ”

“ Raoul commanded harshly, "it was but a weakling who stood next thy seat of power. Behold! I, too, am thy son; I am stronger, of a stouter heart, abler and more courageous than he, and will make thee a fitter heir. Didst thou not slay thy brother to sit in his hall? Didst not thou hang him to drink his wine, to command his servants? Have I done aught but follow thy example?"
Heedless of his father's sobs Raoul pursued his unrelenting purpose.
"What the sword did for thee it has done for me, all glory to the sword," and he raised the reeking blade to his lips to kiss. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Raoul was dead! How I mourned for him none can ever know: it is not seemly to lay bare the inmost secrets of our hearts to the gaze of curious eyes.
Raoul was dead, and on the very threshold of life.
We took him to St. Denis with many another gallant cavalier who had ridden out joyously to the fight with the cry of "For the King!" on his lips. The monks buried him in a plot of consecrated ground without the monastery walls, and Turenne, who recognised his worth, attended the funeral. Stalwart John Humphreys, who had been chosen to guard the young King, was there also. ”

“ The man dropped off him and Raoul reined swiftly away. He remembered the bill hook. "If you will not be so stupid you shall save her."
"You are a liar and a rogue. And the Spaniards have taken her."
"I am what I am. And you shall take her again."
"It is now no use," the Dutchman groaned; "they have had her in their camp. Ach, Gott! Why did you not let me kill her?"
"It is always worth while to live, corbleu. Also you can kill her yet. That is her affair. I suppose you have not had the sense to catch a horse."
"I do not want a horse," said the Dutchman, dully. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But Raoul had galloped round the camp and he sprang down and tethered his horse to a poplar and ran in on foot. And the Dutchman went with him still. No one heeded them. All men were running wildly in that hour. Only Raoul was quite sure of his purpose. He held the Dutchman's arm as he ran and: "Kill her or save her, there she is," he muttered and jerked him round at the tent where Elsa lay. Then Raoul himself ran. He sought things more profitable.
Raoul peeped into Don Julian's tent. It was empty of men, and he sprang in—then through a bustling minute feared it was empty of money, too. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We shine like those fires and those stars; we sigh like those waves; we suffer like those great ships, which are worn out in plowing the waves, in obeying the wind that urges them towards an end, as the breath of God blows us towards a port. Everything likes to live, Raoul; and everything seems beautiful to living things.”
“Monsieur,” said Raoul, “we have before us a beautiful spectacle!”
“How good D’Artagnan is!” interrupted Athos, suddenly, “and what a rare good fortune it is to be supported during a whole life by such a friend as he is! That is what you have missed, Raoul.” ”

“ Where his own passions were not concerned, he must have evinced a stem sort of truthfulness as well as an unflinching determination, for no man despised him, though many cursed his name, and if you search into antiquity, and trace cause and effect, you will find that the liar on the throne does not need to be a coward in order to be withered by the breath of men’s scorn. Sir Raoul’s own people, his soldiers in battle, his yeomen in peace, his servants—if you except the black boy Mahound—cherished a certain pride in Sir Raoul. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yea, Sir Raoul never ceases to hear these words during the whole of his future pilgrimage and warfare: he never loses them in the utmost temptation and trial. He listens to them even when the demon Mahound is dragged before him ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ To whom did she owe loyalty, mercy, the living or the dead? for the peace of the dead nothing now could disturb forever. That was unquestionably what Raoul would do. Let the dead bury the dead.
She sat up quickly, tore the page from its fastenings, opened the door, and started down the corridor, a candle in one hand, Raoul's letter and the stained page in the other. No, she did not argue with Raoul. She did not deny that he was right, always tender of woman, and incapable of a cruel word. What is more lawful, more charitable, than to deceive happiness! God Himself withholds the truth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?" ”