The Lion's Skin

Name: The Lion's Skin
Author: Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

Pages: about 301
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 5.5 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 3.1 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

Mr. Caryll, lately from Rome, stood by the window, looking out over the rainswept, steaming quays to Notre Dame on the island yonder. Overhead rolled and crackled the artillery of an April thunderstorm, and Mr. Caryll, looking out upon Paris in her shroud of rain, under her pall of thundercloud, felt himself at harmony with Nature. Over his heart, too, the gloom of storm was lowering, just as in his heart it was still little more than April time.
Behind him, in that chamber furnished in dark oak and leather of a reign or two ago, sat Sir Richard Everard at a vast writing-table all a-litter with books and papers; and Sir Richard watched his adoptive son with fierce, melancholy eyes, watched him until he grew impatient of this pause.
“Well?” demanded the old baronet harshly. “Will you undertake it, Justin, now that the chance has come?” And he added: “You'll never hesitate if you are the man I have sought to make you.”
Mr. Caryll turned slowly. “It is because I am the man that you--that God and you--have made me that I do hesitate.”
His voice was quiet and pleasantly modulated, and he spoke English with the faintest slur--perceptible, perhaps, only to the keenest ear--of a French accent. To ears less keen it would merely seem that he articulated with a precision so singular as to verge on pedantry.
The light falling full upon his profile revealed the rather singular countenance that was his own. It was not in any remarkable beauty that its distinction lay, for by the canons of beauty that prevail it was not beautiful. The features were irregular and inclined to harshness, the nose was too abruptly arched, the chin too long and square, the complexion too pallid. Yet a certain dignity haunted that youthful face, of such a quality as to stamp it upon the memory of the merest passer-by.

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The Lion's Skin

From the opening

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