Other editions of book The Laughing Cavalier: The Story of the Ancestor of the Scarlet Pimpernel

Set in Holland in 1623/1624, The Laughing Cavalier, by British novelist Baroness Orczy, revolves around Percy Blake, a foreign adventurer and ancestor of the Scarlet Pimpernel who goes by the name Diogenes. Diogenes, we are told by Orczy, is the real subject of the famous painting The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals. The son of an English Nobleman and a Dutch woman, his father abandoned his mother after Diogenes was born, and he was brought up by Hals in Haarlem. He has spent his life fighting in various battles as a mercenary for hire, but now, along with his two sidekicks – fellow 'philosophers' – Socrates and Pythagoras, he is back in Haarlem, penniless and looking for entertainment.

The year is 1623, the place Haarlem in the Netherlands. Diogenes — the first Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel’s ancestor — and his friends Pythagoras and Socrates defend justice and the royalist cause. The famous artist Frans Hals also makes an appearance in this historical adventure. Orczy maintains that Hal’s celebrated portrait of The Laughing Cavalier is actually a portrayal of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s ancestor.

The verger on guard at the west door had quietly dropped to sleep. He did not wake apparently when Jongejuffrouw Beresteyn slipped past him and out through the door. Beresteyn followed close on his sister's heels. He touched her shoulder just as she stood outside the portal, wrapping her fur cloak more snugly over her shoulders and looking round her, anxious where to find her servants. "'Tis late for you to be out this night, Gilda," he said, "and alone." "I am only alone for the moment," she replied quietly. "Maria and Jakob and Piet are waiting for me at the north door. I did not know it would be closed." "But why are you so late?" "I stayed in church after the service." "But why?" he insisted more impatiently. "I could not pray during service," she said. "My thoughts wandered. I wanted to be alone for a few moments with God." "Did you not know then that you were not alone?" "No. Not at first." "But ... afterwards...?" "Your voice, Nicolaes, struck on my ear. I did not want to hear. I wanted to pray." "Yet you listened?" "No. I did not wish to listen." "But you heard?" She gave no actual reply, but he could see her profile straight and white, the curved lips firmly pressed together, the brow slightly puckered, and from the expression of her face and of her whole attitude, he knew that she had heard. He drew in his breath, like one who has received a blow and has not yet realized how deeply it would hurt. His right hand which was resting on his hip tore at the cloth of his doublet, else mayhap it would already have wandered to the hilt of his sword. He had expected it of course. Already when he saw Gilda gliding out of the shadows with that awed, tense expression on her face, he knew that she must have heard ... something at least ... something that had horrified her to the soul. But now of course there was no longer any room for doubt. She had heard everything and the question was what that knowledge, lodged in her brain, might mean to him and to his friends. Just for a moment the frozen, misty atmosphere took on a reddish hue, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, a cold sweat broke out upon his forehead. He looked around him furtively, fearfully, wondering whence came that hideous, insinuating whisper which was freezing the marrow in his bones. No doubt that had she spoken then, had she reproached or adjured, he would have found it impossible to regain mastery over himself. But she looked so unimpassioned, so still, so detached, that self-control came back to him, and for the moment she was safe. "Will you tell me what you did hear?" he asked after awhile, with seeming calm, though he felt as if his words must choke him, and her answer strike him dead. "I heard," she said, speaking very slowly and very quietly, "that the Lord of Stoutenburg has returned, and is trying to drag you and others into iniquity to further his own ambitious schemes." "You wrong him there, Gilda. The Lord of Stoutenburg has certain wrongs to avenge which cry aloud to Heaven." "We will not argue about that, Nicolaes," she said coldly. "Murder is hideous, call it what you will. The brand of Cain doth defame a man and carries its curse with it. No man can justify so dastardly a crime. 'Tis sophistry to suggest it." "Then in sending Barneveld to the scaffold did the Prince of Orange call that curse upon himself, a curse which—please the God of vengeance!—will come home to him now at last." "'Tis not for you, Nicolaes, to condemn him, who has heaped favours, kindness, bounties upon our father and upon us. 'Tis not for you, the Stadtholder's debtor for everything you are, for everything that you possess, 'tis not for you to avenge Barneveld's wrongs." "'Tis not for you, my sister," he retorted hotly, "to preach to me your elder brother. I alone am responsible for mine actions, and have no account to give to any one." "You owe an account of your actions to your father and to me, Nicolaes, since your dishonour will fall upon us too."

The Laughing Cavalier is a 1913 adventure novel by Baroness Orczy, which revolves around Percy Blake, a foreign adventurer and ancestor of Orczy's famous character, the Scarlet Pimpernel. The story takes place in Holland in 1623/1624 and is partly inspired by Frans Hals' painting The Laughing Cavalier: in the novel, Blake is Frans Hals' adopted son and the man who poses for the painting of the Laughing Cavalier. The sequel to this book, continuing the story of Percy Blake, is The First Sir Percy. Odin’s Library Classics is dedicated to bringing the world the best of humankind’s literature from throughout the ages. Carefully selected, each work is unabridged from classic works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or drama.

The year is 1623, the place Haarlem in the Netherlands. Diogenes – the first Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel’s ancestor – and his friends Pythagoras and Socrates defend justice and the royalist cause. The famous artist Frans Hals also makes an appearance in this historical adventure. Orczy maintains that Hal’s celebrated portrait of ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ is actually a portrayal of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s ancestor.

The year is 1623, the place Haarlem in the Netherlands. Diogenes - the first Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel's ancestor - and his friends Pythagoras and Socrates defend justice and the royalist cause. The famous artist Frans Hals also makes an appearance in this historical adventure. Orczy maintains that Hal's celebrated portrait of The Laughing Cavalier is actually a portrayal of the Scarlet Pimpernel's ancestor.

Baroness, (Emusca/Emmuska/Emma Magdalena Rosalia Marie Josepha Barbara) Orczy, Mrs Barstow (1865-1947) was a British novelist, playwright and artist of Hungarian origin. She was most notable for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel. Some of her paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. Her parents left Hungary in 1868, fearful of the threat of a peasant revolution. They lived in Budapest, Brussels, and Paris, where Emma studied music without success. Finally, in 1880, the family moved to London where they lodged with their countryman Francis Pichler. In 1903, she and her husband, Montague MaClean Barstow, wrote a play based on one of her short stories about an English aristocrat, Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., who rescued French aristocrats from the French revolution: The Scarlet Pimpernel. She went on to write over a dozen sequels featuring Sir Percy Blakeney, his family, and the other members of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, of which the first, I Will Repay (1906), was the most popular. The last Pimpernel book, Mam'zelle Guillotine, was published in 1940. She also wrote popular mystery fiction and many adventure romances.

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. Strangely enough his history has never been written before. it is to the man himself -- to the memory of him which is so alive here in Haarlem -- that I am indebted for the true history of his life, and therefore I feel that but little apology is needed for placing the true facts before all those who have known him hitherto only by his picture, who have loved him only for what they guessed. The monograph which I now present with but few additions of minor details, goes to prove what I myself had known long ago, namely, that the Laughing Cavalier who sat to Frans Hals for his portrait in 1624 was the direct ancestor of Sir Percy Blakeney, known to history as the Scarlet Pimpernel.

The Laughing Cavalier The Story of the Ancestor of the Scarlet Pimpernel Baroness Orczy Set in Holland in 1623/1624, and published in 1913, The Laughing Cavalier, by the British novelist Baroness Orczy, revolves around Percy Blake, a foreign adventurer and ancestor of the Scarlet Pimpernel who goes by the name Diogenes who, we are told by Orczy, is the real subject of the famous painting The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals. The son of an English nobleman and a Dutch woman, his father abandoned his mother after Diogenes was born, and he was brought up by Hals in Haarlem. He has spent his life fighting in various battles as a mercenary for hire, but now, along with his two sidekicks – fellow 'philosophers' – Socrates and Pythagoras, he is back in Haarlem, penniless and looking for entertainment. The book is followed by The First Sir Percy. The book was promoted as "Hard riding, desperate fighting, romantic love, the flavor of olden days in the story of the ancestor of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL".

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