The inner characterization in which Aubrey was gradually immersing himself remained a vague though warm generality. He was able to visualize the Thunderer and able to enjoy the results of his genius. In his day dreams he pictured this inner one bringing the world to his feet. Books were being written about him, magazines and newspapers were filled with his praises and interpretations, and men and women everywhere discussed his ascent in awe. He was a conqueror--a bloodless Napoleon and a martyrless Jesus. A prophet whose genius was lifting men out of the mire. What the message was which this inner Aubrey was spreading through the world, what the phrases were that ignited the souls of men, were not contained in his imaginings. He approached them from a critical and not creative angle--his fancies presenting him with descriptive self praises. He composed rambling articles in his mind celebrating his triumphs. This inner Aubrey was eloquent, electrifying, unassailable; men and women wept over his writings and repented; cities reared statues to him, and all places sang his glories. The whole thing had begun as a game, deliberately invented to occupy the leisure of his mind. But he had elaborated on it and it had grown almost by itself. Now it preoccupied him to an alarming degree. The manuscript in his father's collar drawer had given him a shock. He had kept it from his mother, assuring himself that such a course was for the best. It was an odd document for his father to leave behind. As he sat in his study a week after the funeral reading it for the first time, Aubrey grew frightened. It seemed to him that he was looking at his father--for the first time, that the man who had till now been a half enigmatic figure to him, stood at last in the room, strong and alive. The thing was a primitive type of novel--discoursive, gentle, Rabelaisian. It recounted the mental and physical adventures of an Elizabethan philosopher in a succession of unrelated episodes. There was a caress in the sentences, a simplicity in the narrative that translated itself into cunning realism. When he had finished the reading, Aubrey stared at his father's portrait hanging over one of the book cases. The reality of the manuscript held him. He felt bewildered. It had for some three hours lifted him out of the present and immersed him in scenes and amid a company of naive ancients, starkly alive. A dormant literary sense awakened in him. The thing was a work of art, as moving, as authentic as Apuleius or Cervantes. But he would put it away. He hid it in a private drawer. Its memory, however, grew in his mind. During his day at work the thought of the thing his father had written came to haunt him, as if it demanded something. He felt closer to it than he had ever felt to his father. There was something distasteful, though, about the intimacy.