Explore "The Refugees" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Whilst Louis had been affording his court that which he had openly / stated to be the highest of human pleasures -- the sight of the royal / face -- the young officer of the guard outside had been very busy passing / on the titles of the numerous applicants for admission, and exchanging / usually a smile or a few words of greeting with them, for his frank, / handsome face was a well-known one at the court. With his merry eyes / and his brisk bearing, he looked like a man who was on good terms with / Fortune. Indeed, he had good cause to be so, for she had used him well. / Three years ago he had been an unknown subaltern bush-fighting with / Algonquins and Iroquois in the wilds of Canada. An exchange had brought / him back to France and into the regiment of Picardy, but the lucky / chance of having seized the bridle of the king's horse one winter's day / in Fontainebleau when the creature was plunging within a few yards of a / deep gravel-pit had done for him what ten campaigns might have failed to / accomplish. Now as a trusted officer of the king's guard, young, / gallant, and popular, his lot was indeed an enviable one. And yet, with / the strange perversity of human nature, he was already surfeited with / the dull if magnificent routine of the king's household, and looked back / with regret to the rougher and freer days of his early service. / Even there at the royal door his mind had turned away from the frescoed / passage and the groups of courtiers to the wild ravines and foaming / rivers of the West, when suddenly his eyes lit upon a face which he had / last seen among those very scenes.
"Ah, Monsieur de Frontenac! " he cried. "You cannot have forgotten me."