generals and admirals and
governors were discussing him, all the kings and queens and emperors had
put aside their other interests to talk about him. And wherever there
was a man, at the summit of the world or the bottom of it, who by chance
had at some time or other come across that creature, he remembered it
with a secret satisfaction, and MENTIONED it--for it was a distinction,
now! It brings human dignity pretty low, and for a moment the thing is
not quite realizable--but it is perfectly true. If there is a king who
can remember, now, that he once saw that creature in a time past, he has
let that fact out, in a more or less studiedly casual and indifferent
way, some dozens of times during the past week. For a king is merely
human; the inside of him is exactly like the inside of any other person;
and it is human to find satisfaction in being in a kind of personal
way connected with amazing events. We are all privately vain of such a
thing; we are all alike; a king is a king by accident; the reason the
rest of us are not kings is merely due to another accident; we are all
made out of the same clay, and it is a sufficient poor quality.

Below the kings, these remarks are in the air these days; I know it well
as if I were hearing them:

THE COMMANDER: "He was in my army."

THE GENERAL: "He was in my corps."

THE COLONEL: "He was in my regiment. A brute. I remember him well."

THE CAPTAIN: "He was in my company. A troublesome scoundrel. I remember
him well."

THE SERGEANT: "Did I know him? As well as I know you. Why, every morning
I used to--" etc., etc.; a glad, long story, told to devouring ears.

THE LANDLADY: "Many's the time he boarded with me. I can show you his
very room, and the very bed he slept in. And the charcoal mark there
on the wall--he made that. My little Johnny saw him do it with his own
eyes. Didn't you, Johnny?"

It is easy to see, by the papers, that the magistrate and the constables
and the jailer treasure up the assassin's daily remarks and doings
as precious things, and as wallowing this week in seas of blissful
distinction. The interviewer, too; he tried to let on that he is not
vain of his privilege of contact with this man whom few others are
allowed to gaze upon, but he is human, like the rest, and can no more
keep his vanity corked in than could you or I.

Some think that this murder is a frenzied revolt against the criminal
militarism which is impoverishing Europe and driving the s