mies, a man among children, a master intelligence
among intellectual moles: by all rational measurement
the one and only actually great man in that whole
British world; and yet there and then, just as in the
remote England of my birth-time, the sheep-witted
earl who could claim long descent from a king's leman,
acquired at second-hand from the slums of London,
was a better man than I was. Such a personage was
fawned upon in Arthur's realm and reverently looked
up to by everybody, even though his dispositions were
as mean as his intelligence, and his morals as base as
his lineage. There were times when HE could sit down
in the king's presence, but I couldn't. I could have
got a title easily enough, and that would have raised
me a large step in everybody's eyes; even in the