St. Ives, Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England by Robert Louis Stevenson
page 54 of 373 (14%)
page 54 of 373 (14%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
Anne de Keroual de Saint-Yves, a private soldier.'
'I knew it!' cried the boy; 'I knew he was a noble!' And I thought the eyes of Miss Flora said the same, but more persuasively. All through this interview she kept them on the ground, or only gave them to me for a moment at a time, and with a serious sweetness. 'You may conceive, my friends, that this is rather a painful confession,' I continued. 'To stand here before you, vanquished, a prisoner in a fortress, and take my own name upon my lips, is painful to the proud. And yet I wished that you should know me. Long after this, we may yet hear of one another--perhaps Mr. Gilchrist and myself in the field and from opposing camps--and it would be a pity if we heard and did not recognise.' They were both moved; and began at once to press upon me offers of service, such as to lend me books, get me tobacco if I used it, and the like. This would have been all mighty welcome, before the tunnel was ready. Now it signified no more to me than to offer the transition I required. 'My dear friends,' I said--'for you must allow me to call you that, who have no others within so many hundred leagues--perhaps you will think me fanciful and sentimental; and perhaps indeed I am; but there is one service that I would beg of you before all others. You see me set here on the top of this rock in the midst of your city. Even with what liberty I have, I have the opportunity to see a myriad roofs, and I dare to say, thirty leagues of sea and land. |
|