ock be strong and
the key hung high. Claudius thought so too, and he showed it in every
action, though unconsciously enough, for it was a knowledge natural and
not acquired, an instinctive determination to honour where honour was
due. Call it Quixotism if need be. There is nothing ridiculous in the
word, for there breathes no truer knight or gentler soul than
Cervantes's hero in all the pages of history or romance. Why cannot all
men see it? Why must an infamous world be ever sneering at the sight,
and smacking its filthy lips over some fresh gorge of martyrs? Society
has non-suited hell to-day, lest peradventure it should not sleep o'
nights.

Thomas Carlyle, late of Chelsea, knew that. How he hit and hammered and
churned in his wrath, with his great cast-iron words. How the world
shrieked when he wound his tenacious fingers in the glory of her golden
hair and twisted and wrenched and twisted till she yelled for mercy,
promising to be good, like a whipped child. There is a story told of him
which might be true.

It was at a dinner-party, and Carlyle sat silent, listening to the talk
of lesser men, the snow on his hair and the fire in his amber eyes. A
young Liberal was talking theory to a beefy old Conservative, who
despised youth and reason in an equal degree.

"The British people, sir," said he of the beef, "can afford to laugh at
theories."

"Sir," said Carlyle, speaking for the first time during dinner, "the
French nobility of a hundred years ago said they could afford to laugh
at theories. Then came a man and wrote a book called the _Social
Contract_. The man was called Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and his book was a
theory, and nothing but a theory. The nobles could laugh at his theory;
_but their skins went to bind the second edition of his book_[1]."

[Footnote 1: There was a tannery of human skins at Meudon during the
Revolution.]

Look to your skin, world, lest it be dressed to morocco and cunningly
tooled with gold. There is much binding yet to be done.

Claudius thought neither of the world nor of Mr. Carlyle as he walked
back to the hotel; for he was thinking of the Countess Margaret, to the
exclusion of every other earthly or unearthly consideration. But his
thoughts were sad, for he knew that he was to leave her, and he knew
also that he must tell her so. It was no easy matter, and his walk
slackened, till, at the corner of the great thoroughfare, he stood
still, looking at a poor woman who ground a t