“It does represent him. There’s no purporting about the matter. The General’s name is on the pedestal. You’ll see it yourself as soon as you unveil it.” “It now appears,” said Lord Alfred coldly, “that there never was such a person as General John Regan.” “Well? Try and get along a little quicker. I don’t see yet where the insult to the Lord-Lieutenant is supposed to come in.” “You asked the Lord-Lieutenant to unveil a faked-up statue, and you have the amazing assurance to say now that you don’t see that you’ve done anything wrong.” “I don’t.” “But there never was a General——” “Do you mean to say,” said Dr. O’Grady, “that the Lord-Lieutenant supposed that the General really existed?” “Of course he supposed it. How could there be a statue to him if he didn’t? We all supposed it. It wasn’t until His Excellency began to prepare the speech he was to make that we found out the truth. He wrote to the British Museum and to the Librarian at the Bodleian——” “I’m sorry he took all that trouble. We didn’t expect anything of the sort.” “What did you expect?” “Oh, I don’t know. A few words about the elevating nature of great works of art—particularly statues. You know the sort of thing I mean. How the English nation occupies the great position it does very largely because it flocks to the Royal Academy regularly every year. How the people of Ballymoy are opening up a new era for Ireland. But I needn’t go on. You must have heard him making speeches scores of times. That was all we wanted, and if we’d had the slightest idea that he was taking a lot of trouble to prepare a learned lecture we’d have told him that he needn’t.” “But how could he make any speech about a General who never existed?” “My dear Lord Alfred! What has the General got to do with it? We didn’t want a speech about him. We wanted one about his statue.” “But it isn’t his statue. If there was no General there can’t be a statue to him.” “There is,” said Dr. O’Grady. “There’s no use flying in the face of facts. The statue’s under that sheet.” “It’s not. I mean to say that there may be a statue there, but it’s not to General John Regan. How can there be a statue to him when there was no such person?” “Was there ever such a person as Venus?” said Dr. O’Grady. “There wasn’t. And yet every museum in Europe is half full of statues of her. Was there ever such a person as the Dying Gladiator? Was there ever a man called Laocoon, who strangled sea serpents? You know perfectly well that there weren’t any such people, and yet some of the most famous statues in the world are erected in memory of them.” “But His Excellency naturally thought——”