“Of course!” said Justinian, with a snort of disdain; “he wanted to make you a mollycoddle like himself. I wonder you did not go out of your mind in that smoky London, chipping away at marble and cutting it out. Why, you have been here only a couple of months, and already you are in your right mind. Go back to England indeed!—you are a fool if you do. Like myself, you are born to be a ruler, not a unit in English civilization. I’m glad I got you to myself before it was too late.”
“Well, if my career has begun late, I am at least young, and have a long life before me.”
“Yes; I envy you that, Maurice. Look at me! youthful in spirit, old in years. I shall die in the prime of my spiritual strength, just because my wretched body is of an inferior quality to my soul.”
“Still you are good for a few years yet. And, uncle, don’t you think it would be wise of you not to expose yourself in battle?”
“What!” roared the old Demarch in a voice of thunder; “stay in the background! Never while I can handle a sword. I’m not going to let every one else have the fun, and leave myself out of it. Why, this coming war in a teacup is the first bit of amusement I have had for years, and yet you grudge it to me.”
“I don’t want you to be killed, uncle.”
“Oh, I’ll look after myself, never you be afraid! I won’t live any the longer for wrapping myself up in cotton wool, and if I die, why, like Tennyson’s farmer, I die, but I’ll have one stirring fight before I give up the ghost.”
“You have the Baresark fury in you, uncle.”
“An inheritance from our Norman ancestors, my boy. You are more of courtly old Sir Guyon, who went to the Crusades, but I resemble Jarl Hagon, who came sailing to Normandy with Rollo. Indeed, if the theory of transmigration be true, I believe the spirit of that old Norse savage is incarnate in my body. I am born too late! I am an anachronism in this dull, peaceful century, all gas and steam engines. I ought to have fought with Drake and Frobisher. However, I have done my best to make my surroundings agree with my nature, and the result is—Melnos.”
“Which is the result, not of war, but of peace!”