The Laughing Cavalier

The Laughing Cavalier
by Baroness Orczy
1913

Table of Contents
An Apology
Prologue Part 1
Prologue Part 2
New Year's Eve
The Fracas by the Postern Gate
An Interlude
Watch-Night
Brother and Sister
The Counsels of Prudence
Three Philosophers and their Friends
The Lodgings Which Were Paid For
The Painter of Pictures
The Laughing Cavalier
The Bargain

The Portrait
The Spanish Wench
After Evensong
The Halt at Bennebrock
Leyden
An Understanding
The Start
In the Kingdom of the Night
Back Again in Haarlem
A Grief Stricken Father
A Double Pledge
A Spy From the Camp
The Birt of Hate
An Arrant Knave
Back to Houdekerk
Thence to Rotterdam
Check
Check Again
A Nocturne
The Molens

A Run Through the Night
The Captive Lion
Protestations
The Witness for the Defence
Brother Philosophers
Dawn
The Hour
"Sauve Qui Peut"
The Loser Pays
"Vengence is Mine"
The Fight In the Doorway
Leyden Once More
Blake of Blakeney
The End

AN APOLOGY
Does it need one?
If so it must also come from those members of the Blakeney family in
whose veins runs the blood of that Sir Percy Blakeney who is known to
history as the Scarlet Pimpernel-- for they in a manner are responsible
for the telling of this veracious chronicle.
For the past eight years now-- ever since the true story of The Scarlet

Pimpernel was put on record by the present author-- these gentle, kind,
inquisitive friends have asked me to trace their descent back to an
ancestor more remote than was Sir Percy, to one in fact who by his life
and by his deeds stands forth from out the distant past as a conclusive
proof that the laws which govern the principles of heredity are as
unalterable as those that rule the destinies of the universe. They have
pointed out to me that since Sir Percy Blakeney's was an exceptional
personality, possessing exceptional characteristics which his friends
pronounced sublime and his detractors arrogant-- he must have had an
ancestor in the dim long ago who was, like him, exceptional, like him
possessed of qualities which call forth the devotion of friends and
rancour of enemies. Nay, more! there must have existed at one time or
another a man who possessed that sunny disposition, that same
irresistible laughter, that same careless insouciance and adventurous
spirit which were subsequently transmitted to his descendants, of whom
the Scarlet Pimpernel himself was the most distinguished individual.
All these were unanswerable arguments, and with the request that
accompanied then I had long intended to comply. Time has been my
only enemy in thwarting my intentions until now-- time and the
multiplicity of material and documents to be gone through ere vague
knowledge could be turned into certitude.
Now at last I am in a position to present not only to the Blakeneys
themselves, but to all those who look on the Scarlet Pimpernel as their
hero and their friend--the true history of one of his most noted
forebears.
Strangely enough his history has never been written before. And yet
countless millions must during the past three centuries have stood
before his picture; we of the present generation, who are the proud
possessors of that picture now, have looked on him many a time,
always with sheer, pure joy in our hearts, our lips smiling, our eyes
sparkling in response to his; almost forgetting the genius of the artist
who protrayed him in the very realism of the personality which literally
seems to breathe and palpitate and certainly to laugh to us out of the
canvas.

Those twinkling eyes! how well we know them! that laugh! we can
almost hear it; as for the swagger, the devil-may-care arrogance, do we
not condone it, seeing that it has its mainspring behind a fine straight
brow whose noble, sweeping lines betray an undercurrent of dignity
and of thought.
And yet no biographer has-- so far as is known to the author of this
veracious chronicle-- ever attempted to tell us anything of this man's
life, no one has attempted hitherto to lift the veil of anonymity which
only thinly hides the identity of the Laughing Cavalier.
But here in Haarlem-- in the sleepy, yet thriving little town where he
lived, the hard-frozen ground in winter seems at times to send forth a
memory-echo of his firm footstep, of the jingling of his spurs, and the
clang of his sword, and the old gate of the Spaarne through which he
passed so often is still haunted with the sound of his merry laughter,
and his pleasant voice seems still to rouse the ancient walls from their
sleep.
Here too-- hearing these memory-echoes whenever the shadows of
evening draw in on the quaint city-- I had a dream. I saw him just as he
lived, three hundred years ago. He