. Hungering for a chance to put it across the lot that
had outed you? You wouldn't rest till you had William sobbing on his
knees asking your pardon, and you not thinking of granting it? That's
the way you'd feel, but that wasn't the Graf's way, and what's more it
isn't the German way. He went into exile hating humanity, and with a
heart all poison and snakes, but itching to get back. And I'll tell you
why. It's because his kind of German hasn't got any other home on this
earth. Oh, yes, I know there's stacks of good old Teutons come and
squat in our little country and turn into fine Americans. You can do a
lot with them if you catch them young and teach them the Declaration of
Independence and make them study our Sunday papers. But you can't deny
there's something comic in the rough about all Germans, before you've
civilized them. They're a pecooliar people, a darned pecooliar people,
else they wouldn't staff all the menial and indecent occupations on the
globe. But that pecooliarity, which is only skin-deep in the working
Boche, is in the bone of the grandee. Your German aristocracy can't
consort on terms of equality with any other Upper Ten Thousand. They
swagger and bluff about the world, but they know very well that the
world's sniggering at them. They're like a boss from Salt Creek Gully
who's made his pile and bought a dress suit and dropped into a Newport
evening party. They don't know where to put their hands or how to keep
their feet still ... Your copper-bottomed English nobleman has got to
keep jogging himself to treat them as equals instead of sending them
down to the servants' hall. Their fine fixings are just the high light
that reveals the everlasting jay. They can't be gentlemen, because they
aren't sure of themselves. The world laughs at them, and they know it
and it riles them like hell ... That's why when a Graf is booted out of
the Fatherland, he's got to creep back somehow or be a wandering Jew
for the rest of time.'

Blenkiron lit another cigar and fixed me with his steady, ruminating
eye.

'For eight years the man has slaved, body and soul, for the men who
degraded him. He's earned his restoration and I daresay he's got it in
his pocket. If merit was rewarded he should be covered with Iron
Crosses and Red Eagles ... He had a pretty good hand to start out with.
He knew other countries and he was a dandy at languages. More, he had
an uncommon gift for living a part. That is real genius, Dick, howe