“There was a weaver (of all people) joined me at St. Ninians; he was more of a man than my papa!” he thought. “I saw him lie doubled in his blood and a grenadier below him—and he died for my papa! All died for him, or risked the dying, and I lay for him all those months in the rain and skulked in heather like a fox; and now he writes me his advice! calls me Carluccio—me, the man of the house, the only king in that king’s race.“ He ground his teeth. “The only king in Europe! Who else? Who has done and suffered except me? who has lain and run and hidden with his faithful subjects, like a second Bruce? Not my accursed cousin, Louis of France at least, the lewd effeminate traitor!” And filling the glass to the brim, he drank a king’s damnation. Ah, if he had the power of Louis, what a king were here!
The minutes followed each other into the past, and still he persevered in this debilitating cycle of emotions, still fed the fire of his excitement with driblets of Rhine wine: a boy at odds with life, a boy with a spark of the heroic, which he was now burning out and drowning down in futile reverie and solitary excess.
From two rooms beyond, the sudden sound of a raised voice attracted him.
“By....