Chapter I. The New Lodgers at No. 7 Philibert Place

The Lost Prince

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

There are many dreary and dingy rows of ugly houses in certain
parts of London, but there certainly could not be any row more ugly
or dingier than Philibert Place. There were stories that it had once
been more attractive, but that had been so long ago that no one
remembered the time. It stood back in its gloomy, narrow strips of
uncared-for, smoky gardens, whose broken iron railings were supposed
to protect it from the surging traffic of a road which was always
roaring with the rattle of busses, cabs, drays, and vans, and the
passing of people who were shabbily dressed and looked as if they
were either going to hard work or coming from it, or hurrying to see
if they could find some of it to do to keep themselves from going
hungry. The brick fronts of the houses were blackened with smoke,
their windows were nearly all dirty and hung with dingy curtains, or
had no curtains at all; the strips of ground, which had once been
intended to grow flowers in, had been trodden down into bare earth in
which even weeds had forgotten to grow. One of them was used as a
stone-cutter's yard, and cheap monuments, crosses, and slates were
set out for sale, bearing inscriptions beginning with "Sacred to the
Memory of." Another had piles of old lumber in it, another exhibited
second-hand furniture, chairs with unsteady legs, sofas with
horsehair stuffing bulging out of holes in their covering, mirrors
with blotches or cracks in them. The insides of the houses were as
gloomy as the outside. They were all exactly alike. In each a dark
entrance passage led to narrow stairs going up to bedrooms, and to
narrow steps going down to a basement kitchen. The back bedroom
looked out on small, sooty, flagged yards, where thin cats quarreled,
or sat on the coping of the brick walls hoping that sometime they
might feel the sun; the front rooms looked over the noisy road, and
through their windows came the roar and rattle of it. It was shabby
and cheerless on the brightest days, and on foggy or rainy ones it
was the most forlorn place in London.



At least that was what one boy thought as he stood near the iron
railings watching the passers-by on the morning on which this story
begins, which was also the morning after he had been brought by his
father to live as a lodger in the back sitting-room of the house No.
7.

He was a boy about twelve years old, his name was Marco
Loristan, and he was the kind of boy people look at a second time
when they have looked at him once. In the first place, he was a very
big boy--tall for his years, and with a particularly strong frame.
His shoulders were broad and his arms and legs were long and
powerful. He was quite used to hearing people say, as they glanced
at him, "What a fine, big lad!" And then they always looked again at
his face. It was not an English face or an American one, and was
very dark in coloring. His features were strong, his black hair grew
on his head like a mat, his eyes were large and deep set, and looked
out between thick, straight, black lashes. He was as un- English a
boy as one could imagine, and an observing person would have been
struck at once by a sort of silent look expressed by his whole face,
a look which suggested that he was not a boy who talked much.

This look was specially noticeable this morning as he stood
before the iron railings. The things he was thinking of were of a
kind likely to bring to the face of a twelve-year-old boy an unboyish
expression.

He was thinking of the long, hurried journey he and his father
and their old soldier servant, Lazarus, had made during the last few
days--the journey from Russia. Cramped in a close third-class
railway carriage, they had dashed across the Continent as if
something important or terrible were driving them, and here they
were, settled in London as if they were going to live forever at No.
7 Philibert Place. He knew, however, that though they might stay a
year, it was just as probable that, in the middle of some night, his
father or Lazarus might waken him from his sleep and say, "Get up--
dress yourself quickly. We must go at once." A few days later, he
might be in St. Petersburg, Berlin, Vienna, or Budapest, huddled away
in some poor little house as shabby and comfortless as No. 7
Philibert Place.

He passed his hand over his forehead as he thought of it and
watched the busses. His strange life and his close association with
his father had made him much older than his years, but he was only a
boy, after all, and the mystery of things sometimes weighed heavily
upon him, and set him to deep wondering.

In not one of the many countries he knew had he ever met a boy
whose life was in the least like his own. Other boys had homes in
which they spent year after year; they went to school regularly, and
played with other boys, and talked openly of the things which
happened to them, and the journeys they made. When he remained in a
place long enough to make a few boy-friends, he knew he must never
forget that his whole existence was a sort of secret whose safety
depended upon his own silence and discretion.

This was because of the promises he had made to his father, and
they had been the first thing he remembered. Not that he had ever
regretted anything connected with his father. He threw his black
head up as he thought of that. None of the other boys had such a
father, not one of them. His father was his idol and his chief. He
had scarcely ever seen him when his clothes had not been poor and
shabby, but he had also never seen him when, despite his worn coat
and frayed linen, he had not stood out among all others as more
distinguished than the most noticeable of them. When he walked down
a street, people turned to look at him even oftener than they turned
to look at Marco, and the boy felt as if it was not merely because he
was a big man with a handsome, dark face, but because he looked,
somehow, as if he had been born to command armies, and as if no one
would think of disobeying him. Yet Marco had never seen him command
any one, and they had always been poor, and shabbily dressed, and
often enough ill-fed. But whether they were in one country or
another, and whatsoever dark place they seemed to be hiding in, the
few people they saw treated him with a sort of deference, and nearly
always stood when they were in his presence, unless he bade them sit
down.

"It is because they know he is a patriot, and patriots are
respected," the boy had told himself.

He himself wished to be a patriot, though he had never seen his
own country of Samavia. He knew it well, however. His father had
talked to him about it ever since that day when he had made the
promises. He had taught him to know it by helping him to study
curious detailed maps of it--maps of its cities, maps of its
mountains, maps of its roads. He had told him stories of the wrongs
done its people, of their sufferings and struggles for liberty, and,
above all, of their unconquerable courage. When they talked together
of its history, Marco's boy-blood burned and leaped in his veins, and
he always knew, by the look in his father's eyes, that his blood
burned also. His countrymen had been killed, they had been robbed,
they had died by thousands of cruelties and starvation, but their
souls had never been conquered, and, through all the years during
which more powerful nations crushed and enslaved them, they never
ceased to struggle to free themselves and stand unfettered as
Samavians had stood centuries before.

"Why do we not live there," Marco had cried on the day the
promises were made. "Why do we not go back and fight? When I am a
man, I will be a soldier and die for Samavia."

"We are of those who must live for Samavia--working day and
night," his father had answered; "denying ourselves, training our
bodies and souls, using our brains, learning the things which are
best to be done for our people and our country. Even exiles may be
Samavian soldiers--I am one, you must be one."

"Are we exiles?" asked Marco.

"Yes," was the answer. "But even if we never set foot on
Samavian soil, we must give our lives to it. I have given mine since
I was sixteen. I shall give it until I die."

"Have you never lived there?" said Marco.

A strange look shot across his father's face.

"No," he answered, and said no more. Marco watching him, knew
he must not ask the question again.

The next words his father said were about the promises. Marco
was quite a little fellow at the time, but he understood the
solemnity of them, and felt that he was being honored as if he were a
man.

"When you are a man, you shall know all you wish to know,"
Loristan said. "Now you are a child, and your mind must not be
burdened. But you must do your part. A child sometimes forgets that
words may be dangerous. You must promise never to forget this.
Wheresoever you are; if you have playmates, you must remember to be
silent about many things. You must not speak of what I do, or of the
people who come to see me. You must not mention the things in your
life which make it different from the lives of other boys. You must
keep in your mind that a secret exists which a chance foolish word
might betray. You are a Samavian, and there have been Samavians who
have died a thousand deaths rather than betray a secret. You must
learn to obey without question, as if you were a soldier. Now you
must take your oath of allegiance."

He rose from his seat and went to a corner of the room. He
knelt down, turned back the carpet, lifted a plank, and took
something from beneath it. It was a sword, and, as he came back to
Marco, he drew it out from its sheath. The child's strong, little
body stiffened and drew itself up, his large, deep eyes flashed. He
was to take his oath of allegiance upon a sword as if he were a man.
He did not know that his small hand opened and shut with a fierce
understanding grip because those of his blood had for long centuries
past carried swords and fought with them.

Loristan gave him the big bared weapon, and stood erect before
him.

"Repeat these words after me sentence by sentence!" he
commanded.

And as he spoke them Marco echoed each one loudly and
clearly.

"The sword in my hand--for Samavia!

"The heart in my breast--for Samavia!

"The swiftness of my sight, the thought of my brain, the life of
my life--for Samavia.

"Here grows a man for Samavia.

"God be thanked!"

Then Loristan put his hand on the child's shoulder, and his dark
face looked almost fiercely proud.

"From this hour," he said, "you and I are comrades at arms."

And from that day to the one on which he stood beside the broken
iron railings of No. 7 Philibert Place, Marco had not forgotten for
one hour.