Then Barty came home, having dined well, and in very high spirits.
"Well, old fellow! how do you like Sardonyx?"
I was so moved and excited I could say nothing—I couldn't even smoke. I was allowed to take the precious manuscript away with me, and finished it during the night.
Next morning I wrote to him out of the fulness of my heart.
I read it aloud to my father and mother, and then lent it to Scatcherd, who read it to Ida. In twenty-four hours our gay and genial Barty—our Robin Goodfellow and Merry Andrew, our funny man—had become for us a demi-god; for all but my father, who looked upon him as a splendid but irretrievably lost soul, and mourned over him as over a son of his own.
And in two months Sardonyx was before the reading world, and the middle-aged reader will remember the wild enthusiasm and the storm it raised.
All that is ancient history, and I will do no more than allude to the unparalleled bitterness of the attacks made by the Church on a book which is now quoted again and again from every pulpit in England—in the world—and has been translated into almost every language under the sun.
Thus he leaped into fame and fortune at a bound, and at first they delighted him. He would take little Roberta on to the top of his head and dance "La Paladine" on his hearth-rug, singing:
"Rataplan, Rataplan,
I'm a celebrated man—"
"Rataplan, Rataplan,
I'm a celebrated man—"