mazing thing to me is that nobody should have had the necessary
information to lead them at least in the right direction. And yet I run
on too fast. After all, who shall be blamed, for it is, of course, the
Grey Room and nothing but the Grey Room we are concerned with. Am I
right? The Grey Room has the evil fame?"

"Certainly it has."

"And yet a little knowledge of a few peculiar facts--a pinch of
history--yet, once again, who shall be blamed? Who can be fairly asked
to possess that pinch of history which means so much in this room?"

"How could history have helped us, signor?" asked Henry Lennox.

"I shall tell you. But history is always helpful. There is history
everywhere around us--not only here, but in every other department of
this noble house. Take these chairs. By the accident of training, I read
in them a whole chapter of the beginnings of the Renaissance; to you
they are only old furniture. You thought them Spanish because they were
bought in Spain--at Valencia, as a matter of fact. You did not know
that, Sir Walter; but your grandfather purchased them there--to the
despair and envy of another collector. Yes, these chairs have speaking
faces to me, just as the ceiling over them has a speaking face also.
It, too, is copied. History, in fact, breathes its very essence in this
home. If I knew more history than I do, then other beautiful things
would talk to me as freely as these chairs--and as freely as the
trophies of the chase and the tiger skins below no doubt talk to Sir
Walter. But are we not all historical--men, women, even children? To
exist is to take your place in history, though, as in my case, the fact
will not be recorded save in the 'Chronicles' of the everlasting. Yes,
I am ancient history now, and go far back, before Italy was a united
kingdom. Much entertaining information will be lost for ever when I die.
Believe me, while the new generation is crying forth the new knowledge
and glorying in its genius, we of the old guard are sinking into our
graves and taking the old knowledge with us. Yet they only rediscover
for themselves what we know. Human life is the snake with its tail in
its mouth--Nietzsche's eternal recurrence and the commonplaces of
our forefathers are echoed on the lips of our children as great
discoveries."

Henry Lennox ventured to bring him back to the point.

"What knowledge--what particular branch of information should a man
possess, signor, to find out what you have foun