Emma Orczy

The Laughing Cavalier Emma Orczy

In March 1623, the Dutch nobleman Willem van Oldenbarnevelt, Lord of Stoutenburg, is on the run. His father, the statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt ("John of Barneveld" in the book) was falsely accused of treason and sent to the gallows by the Stadtholder, Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange in 1619; and his brother Reinier van Oldenbarnevelt, the lord of Groeneveld, has since been arrested and executed for plotting to kill the Prince. Stoutenburg is now a fugitive and determined to get his revenge. Stoutenburg asks for shelter from Gilda Beresteyn, the daughter of a rich merchant. Gilda was once in love with Stoutenburg, but has never forgiven him for abandoning her to make a more profitable marriage. Despite her reservations she shelters him for a short time, but eventually she sends him away, knowing that her father, a friend of the Prince of Orange, will not approve. Nine months later, Gilda is walking through Haarlem to the New Year's Eve service and sees three foreign adventurers intervening to protect a Spanish woman who is being attacked by a mob. After the fracas is over, Gilda speaks to the three men. They are mercenaries who call themselves after famous philosophers: "Diogenes," "Socrates," and "Pythagoras." Gilda is attracted to "Diogenes" (really Percy Blakeney, the illegitimate son of an English nobleman and a Dutch woman), but he offends her by taking his leave and going off to a pub. Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi was a Hungarian-born British novelist, playwright and artist of noble origin. She is most known for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel. In 1903, Orczy and her husband 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. The play was accepted for production in the West End and though initially drew only small audiences, it ran four years, broke many stage records, was translated and produced in other countries, and underwent several revivals. This theatrical success generated huge sales for the novel and Orczy went on to write over a dozen sequels. Orczy's novels were racy, mannered melodramas and she favored historical fiction.