Chapter II. A Young Citizen of the World

The Lost Prince

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

He had been in London more than once before, but not to the
lodgings in Philibert Place. When he was brought a second or third
time to a town or city, he always knew that the house he was taken to
would be in a quarter new to him, and he should not see again the
people he had seen before. Such slight links of acquaintance as
sometimes formed themselves between him and other children as shabby
and poor as himself were easily broken. His father, however, had
never forbidden him to make chance acquaintances. He had, in fact,
told him that he had reasons for not wishing him to hold himself
aloof from other boys. The only barrier which must exist between
them must be the barrier of silence concerning his wanderings from
country to country. Other boys as poor as he was did not make
constant journeys, therefore they would miss nothing from his boyish
talk when he omitted all mention of his. When he was in Russia, he
must speak only of Russian places and Russian people and customs.
When he was in France, Germany, Austria, or England, he must do the
same thing. When he had learned English, French, German, Italian,
and Russian he did not know. He had seemed to grow up in the midst
of changing tongues which all seemed familiar to him, as languages
are familiar to children who have lived with them until one scarcely
seems less familiar than another. He did remember, however, that his
father had always been unswerving in his attention to his
pronunciation and method of speaking the language of any country they
chanced to be living in.

"You must not seem a foreigner in any country," he had said to
him. "It is necessary that you should not. But when you are in
England, you must not know French, or German, or anything but
English."

Once, when he was seven or eight years old, a boy had asked him
what his father's work was.

"His own father is a carpenter, and he asked me if my father was
one," Marco brought the story to Loristan. "I said you were not.
Then he asked if you were a shoemaker, and another one said you might
be a bricklayer or a tailor--and I didn't know what to tell them."
He had been out playing in a London street, and he put a grubby
little hand on his father's arm, and clutched and almost fiercely
shook it. "I wanted to say that you were not like their fathers, not
at all. I knew you were not, though you were quite as poor. You are
not a bricklayer or a shoemaker, but a patriot--you could not be only
a bricklayer--you!" He said it grandly and with a queer indignation,
his black head held up and his eyes angry.

Loristan laid his hand against his mouth.

"Hush! hush!" he said. "Is it an insult to a man to think he
may be a carpenter or make a good suit of clothes? If I could make
our clothes, we should go better dressed. If I were a shoemaker,
your toes would not be making their way into the world as they are
now." He was smiling, but Marco saw his head held itself high, too,
and his eyes were glowing as he touched his shoulder. "I know you
did not tell them I was a patriot," he ended. "What was it you said
to them?"

"I remembered that you were nearly always writing and drawing
maps, and I said you were a writer, but I did not know what you
wrote--and that you said it was a poor trade. I heard you say that
once to Lazarus. Was that a right thing to tell them?"

"Yes. You may always say it if you are asked. There are poor
fellows enough who write a thousand different things which bring them
little money. There is nothing strange in my being a writer."

So Loristan answered him, and from that time if, by any chance,
his father's means of livelihood were inquired into, it was simple
enough and true enough to say that he wrote to earn his bread.

In the first days of strangeness to a new place, Marco often
walked a great deal. He was strong and untiring, and it amused him
to wander through unknown streets, and look at shops, and houses, and
people. He did not confine himself to the great thoroughfares, but
liked to branch off into the side streets and odd, deserted-looking
squares, and even courts and alleyways. He often stopped to watch
workmen and talk to them if they were friendly. In this way he made
stray acquaintances in his strollings, and learned a good many
things. He had a fondness for wandering musicians, and, from an old
Italian who had in his youth been a singer in opera, he had learned
to sing a number of songs in his strong, musical boy-voice. He knew
well many of the songs of the people in several countries.

It was very dull this first morning, and he wished that he had
something to do or some one to speak to. To do nothing whatever is a
depressing thing at all times, but perhaps it is more especially so
when one is a big, healthy boy twelve years old. London as he saw it
in the Marylebone Road seemed to him a hideous place. It was murky
and shabby-looking, and full of dreary-faced people. It was not the
first time he had seen the same things, and they always made him feel
that he wished he had something to do.

Suddenly he turned away from the gate and went into the house to
speak to Lazarus. He found him in his dingy closet of a room on the
fourth floor at the back of the house.

"I am going for a walk," he announced to him. "Please tell my
father if he asks for me. He is busy, and I must not disturb
him."

Lazarus was patching an old coat as he often patched things--
even shoes sometimes. When Marco spoke, he stood up at once to
answer him. He was very obstinate and particular about certain forms
of manner. Nothing would have obliged him to remain seated when
Loristan or Marco was near him. Marco thought it was because he had
been so strictly trained as a soldier. He knew that his father had
had great trouble to make him lay aside his habit of saluting when
they spoke to him.

"Perhaps," Marco had heard Loristan say to him almost severely,
once when he had forgotten himself and had stood at salute while his
master passed through a broken-down iron gate before an equally
broken-down-looking lodging-house--"perhaps you can force yourself to
remember when I tell you that it is not safe--it is not safe! You
put us in danger!"

It was evident that this helped the good fellow to control
himself. Marco remembered that at the time he had actually turned
pale, and had struck his forehead and poured forth a torrent of
Samavian dialect in penitence and terror. But, though he no longer
saluted them in public, he omitted no other form of reverence and
ceremony, and the boy had become accustomed to being treated as if he
were anything but the shabby lad whose very coat was patched by the
old soldier who stood "at attention" before him.

"Yes, sir," Lazarus answered. "Where was it your wish to
go?"

Marco knitted his black brows a little in trying to recall
distinct memories of the last time he had been in London.

"I have been to so many places, and have seen so many things
since I was here before, that I must begin to learn again about the
streets and buildings I do not quite remember."

"Yes, sir," said Lazarus. "There have been so many. I also
forget. You were but eight years old when you were last here."

"I think I will go and find the royal palace, and then I will
walk about and learn the names of the streets," Marco said.

"Yes, sir," answered Lazarus, and this time he made his military
salute.

Marco lifted his right hand in recognition, as if he had been a
young officer. Most boys might have looked awkward or theatrical in
making the gesture, but he made it with naturalness and ease, because
he had been familiar with the form since his babyhood. He had seen
officers returning the salutes of their men when they encountered
each other by chance in the streets, he had seen princes passing
sentries on their way to their carriages, more august personages
raising the quiet, recognizing hand to their helmets as they rode
through applauding crowds. He had seen many royal persons and many
royal pageants, but always only as an ill-clad boy standing on the
edge of the crowd of common people. An energetic lad, however poor,
cannot spend his days in going from one country to another without,
by mere every-day chance, becoming familiar with the outer life of
royalties and courts. Marco had stood in continental thoroughfares
when visiting emperors rode by with glittering soldiery before and
behind them, and a populace shouting courteous welcomes. He knew
where in various great capitals the sentries stood before kingly or
princely palaces. He had seen certain royal faces often enough to
know them well, and to be ready to make his salute when particular
quiet and unattended carriages passed him by.

"It is well to know them. It is well to observe everything and
to train one's self to remember faces and circumstances," his father
had said. "If you were a young prince or a young man training for a
diplomatic career, you would be taught to notice and remember people
and things as you would be taught to speak your own language with
elegance. Such observation would be your most practical
accomplishment and greatest power. It is as practical for one man as
another--for a poor lad in a patched coat as for one whose place is
to be in courts. As you cannot be educated in the ordinary way, you
must learn from travel and the world. You must lose nothing--forget
nothing."

It was his father who had taught him everything, and he had
learned a great deal. Loristan had the power of making all things
interesting to fascination. To Marco it seemed that he knew
everything in the world. They were not rich enough to buy many
books, but Loristan knew the treasures of all great cities, the
resources of the smallest towns. Together he and his boy walked
through the endless galleries filled with the wonders of the world,
the pictures before which through centuries an unbroken procession of
almost worshiping eyes had passed uplifted. Because his father made
the pictures seem the glowing, burning work of still-living men whom
the centuries could not turn to dust, because he could tell the
stories of their living and laboring to triumph, stories of what they
felt and suffered and were, the boy became as familiar with the old
masters--Italian, German, French, Dutch, English, Spanish--as he was
with most of the countries they had lived in. They were not merely
old masters to him, but men who were great, men who seemed to him to
have wielded beautiful swords and held high, splendid lights. His
father could not go often with him, but he always took him for the
first time to the galleries, museums, libraries, and historical
places which were richest in treasures of art, beauty, or story.
Then, having seen them once through his eyes, Marco went again and
again alone, and so grew intimate with the wonders of the world. He
knew that he was gratifying a wish of his father's when he tried to
train himself to observe all things and forget nothing. These
palaces of marvels were his school-rooms, and his strange but rich
education was the most interesting part of his life. In time, he
knew exactly the places where the great Rembrandts, Vandykes, Rubens,
Raphaels, Tintorettos, or Frans Hals hung; he knew whether this
masterpiece or that was in Vienna, in Paris, in Venice, or Munich, or
Rome. He knew stories of splendid crown jewels, of old armor, of
ancient crafts, and of Roman relics dug up from beneath the
foundations of old German cities. Any boy wandering to amuse himself
through museums and palaces on "free days" could see what he saw, but
boys living fuller and less lonely lives would have been less likely
to concentrate their entire minds on what they looked at, and also
less likely to store away facts with the determination to be able to
recall at any moment the mental shelf on which they were laid.
Having no playmates and nothing to play with, he began when he was a
very little fellow to make a sort of game out of his rambles through
picture-galleries, and the places which, whether they called
themselves museums or not, were storehouses or relics of antiquity.
There were always the blessed "free days," when he could climb any
marble steps, and enter any great portal without paying an entrance
fee. Once inside, there were plenty of plainly and poorly dressed
people to be seen, but there were not often boys as young as himself
who were not attended by older companions. Quiet and orderly as he
was, he often found himself stared at. The game he had created for
himself was as simple as it was absorbing. It was to try how much he
could remember and clearly describe to his father when they sat
together at night and talked of what he had seen. These night talks
filled his happiest hours. He never felt lonely then, and when his
father sat and watched him with a certain curious and deep attention
in his dark, reflective eyes, the boy was utterly comforted and
content. Sometimes he brought back rough and crude sketches of
objects he wished to ask questions about, and Loristan could always
relate to him the full, rich story of the thing he wanted to know.
They were stories made so splendid and full of color in the telling
that Marco could not forget them.