Honneur, Patrie, Valeur, Discipline
Honor, Country, Valor, Discipline.
Everyone seems to forget that Raoul is more than just a backbone less fop. Gaston Leroux describes him as a sailor. In fact, before his engagement to Christine, he is about to leave for a scientific mission to the North Pole. This, hopefully, is the beginning of a long, multi-chaptered tale involving Raoul de Changy as, in a manner of speaking, Horatio Hornblower. If that doesn't happen, I hope that this is a nice semi-drabble.
Please bear with me, as this is a story that reacquires veritable mountains of research.
My Raoul belongs to Gaston Leroux.
Raoul had always loved the sea, loved the rolling, salty billows and the howling wind, loved the bite of the breeze and the howl of the gulls. It was his lifeblood: as a child, it had seemed that his heart beat saltwater. The sea gave him strength and fortitude. Once, it found him his dearest friend.
He never forgot the day he'd first swum through the waves, tasting the brine of the waves and feeling, reveling in the strength of his childish muscles. He rescued a girl's flowing red scarf from a liquid grave in the flowing Manche, and he met Christine. Christine was the sweet dearest of his days, his beloved childhood friend and his beloved, well, beloved. And he owed their acquaintance to the sea.
It was only natural, then, that, when the time came for him to choose a profession (as befits the second son of a Comte), he chose to devote himself to Neptune. It was his first love, and it had given him his second.