Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/319

308 amaze with which they regarded the stature, the strength, the sweeping beard, and the careless royalty of bearing of this athlete, who came amongst them as though to show them all that this manhood, which they had crucified and buried in their own lives as an unholy and accursed thing, might be and might enjoy. His past had been full of ever-changing scenes and experiences; hair-breadth escapes, desperate dangers, wild adventure, and keen perils, had been continually his portion in the distant and intricate missions on which he was sent. A struggle of life and death in the heart of Persia had been followed by dreamy barbaric luxury and magnificence in the midst of Mexican palaces; a death-ride through Russian snow-storms, with the baying pack of starving wolves on his track through the whole of a bitter icy night, had been succeeded by months of gaiety in the capitals of Europe; a shipwreck in the midst of the Indian Ocean, with a Malay crew ripe for murder, and an open boat living for days on tempestuous seas in the glare of a tropic sun, with men around him dying like dogs for water, had been effaced almost as soon as endured by the brilliant fiery pleasures of a volunteer service with the French cavalry in a campaign against the Arabs; or a desert quest for desert game over the