seat in the hotel carriage as
though it were my chariot about to proceed with me to the imperial
palace. People discreetly dropped their eyes before my proud gaze, and
into their hearts I know I forced the query, What manner of man can this
mortal be? I was superior to convention, and the very garb which
otherwise would have damned me tended toward my elevation. And all this
was due, not to my royal lineage, nor to the deeds I had done and the
champions I had overthrown, but to a certain hogskin belt buckled next
the skin. The sweat of months was upon it, toil had defaced it, and it
was not a creation such as would appeal to the aesthetic mind; but it was
plethoric. There was the arcanum; each yellow grain conduced to my
exaltation, and the sum of these grains was the sum of my mightiness.
Had they been less, just so would have been my stature; more, and I
should have reached the sky.

And this was my royal progress through that most loyal city. I purchased
a host of things from the tradespeople, and bought me such pleasures and
diversions as befitted one who had long been denied. I scattered my gold
lavishly, nor did I chaffer over prices in mart or exchange. And,
because of these things I did, I demanded homage. Nor was it refused. I
moved through wind-swept groves of limber backs; across sunny glades,
lighted by the beaming rays from a thousand obsequious eyes; and when I
tired of this, basked on the greensward of popular approval. Money was
very good, I thought, and for the time was content. But there rushed
upon me the words of Erasmus, "When I get some money I shall buy me some
Greek books, and afterwards some clothes," and a great shame wrapped me
around. But, luckily for my soul's welfare, I reflected and was saved.
By the clearer vision vouchsafed me, I beheld Erasmus, fire-flashing,
heaven-born, while I--I was merely a clay-born, a son of earth. For a
giddy moment I had forgotten this, and tottered. And I rolled over on my
greensward, caught a glimpse of a regiment of undulating backs, and
thanked my particular gods that such moods of madness were passing brief.

But on another day, receiving with kingly condescension the service of my
good subjects' backs, I remembered the words of another man, long since
laid away, who was by birth a nobleman, by nature a philosopher and a
gentleman, and who by circumstance yielded up his head upon the block.
"That a man of lead," he once remarked, "who has no