Guy Livingstone; or, 'Thorough'Lawrence, George A. (George Alfred)
General
Guy Livingstone; or, 'Thorough'
Lawrence, George A. (George Alfred)
Fiction
What are the qualifications of a general favorite? Good looks, good
birth, good-humor, and good assurance will do much; but the want of one
or more of these will not invalidate the election, nor the union of all
four insure it. It must be very pleasant to serve in the _compagnie
d'elite_. They have privileges to which the Line may not aspire. It does
not much matter what they do. Their victories make them no enemies, and
their defeats raise them up hosts of sympathizers and apologists. When
they err gravely, if you hint at the misdemeanor, a "true believer"
looks at you indignantly, not to say contemptuously, and says, "What
could you expect? It's only poor--" Yes, it is a great gift--Amiability;
and when the possessor dies, it is profoundly true that better men might
be better spared.
Very soon Raymond came to take his daughter back to England. That calm
old calculating machine was more deranged and shocked by the catastrophe
than I should have thought it possible he would have been by any earthly
disaster. He was getting older now, and more broken, it is true, and so,
perhaps, was more accessible to the weakness of sympathy. At all events,
nothing could be kinder and more considerate than his conduct to Isabel.
Guy and I still lingered on in Rome. He was untiring in his researches,
but quite unsuccessful. Yet it was not that the police were remiss, or
the country people inclined to shield the murderer. The best of them
would have sold his own father to the guillotine for half the reward
offered by Livingstone, for he lavished as much gold in trying to clear
up that crime as in old days the Cenci or Colonna did to smother theirs.
At length we were forced to give it up, and returned home in the
_Petrel_. I own I despaired of ever being more successful; but my
companion evidently had not done so, for I heard him, more than once,
mutter to himself, in the same low, determined tone, "If he is on
earth, I'll find him."
Immediately on our arrival, Guy went up to Bruce's home in Scotland. He
only learned that the latter had not been there for a long time; but
that some months back, Allan Macbane, a sort of steward and old
dependent of the family, had left suddenly, summoned, it was supposed,
by his master. More the people could not or would not tell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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