vast silence and freshness
healed his irritation at modern ugliness and unrest. It seemed a
background fit for the return of chivalry. In such a forest a king and
all his court might lose themselves hunting or a knight errant might
perish with no companion but God. The castle itself when he reached it
was somewhat smaller than he had expected, but he was delighted with
its romantic and castellated outline. He was just about to alight when
somebody opened two enormous gates at the side and the vehicle drove
briskly through.

"That is not the house?" he inquired politely of the driver.

"No, sir," said the driver, controlling the corners of his mouth. "The
lodge, sir."

"Indeed," said the Duc de Chambertin-Pommard, "that is where the Duke's
land begins?"

"Oh no, sir," said the man, quite in distress. "We've been in his
Grace's land all day."

The Frenchman thanked him and leant back in the carriage, feeling as if
everything were incredibly huge and vast, like Gulliver in the country
of the Brobdingnags.

He got out in front of a long facade of a somewhat severe building, and
a little careless man in a shooting jacket and knickerbockers ran down
the steps. He had a weak, fair moustache and dull, blue, babyish eyes;
his features were insignificant, but his manner extremely pleasant
and hospitable, This was the Duke of Aylesbury, perhaps the largest
landowner in Europe, and known only as a horsebreeder until he began
to write abrupt little letters about the Budget. He led the French Duke
upstairs, talking trivialties in a hearty way, and there presented
him to another and more important English oligarch, who got up from a
writing-desk with a slightly senile jerk. He had a gleaming bald head
and glasses; the lower part of his face was masked with a short,
dark beard, which did not conceal a beaming smile, not unmixed with
sharpness. He stooped a little as he ran, like some sedentary head clerk
or cashier; and even without the cheque-book and papers on his desk
would have given the impression of a merchant or man of business. He was
dressed in a light grey check jacket. He was the Duke of Windsor, the
great Unionist statesman. Between these two loose, amiable men, the
little Gaul stood erect in his black frock coat, with the monstrous
gravity of French ceremonial good manners. This stiffness led the Duke
of Windsor to put him at his ease (like a tenant), and he said, rubbing
his hands:

"I was delighted with your le