“Ay,” said St Denys, assuming indifference of the slight. “That has been a long one, too. I can scarce remember it but as it is now, and I am rising twenty-seven. It held itself royal and unapproachable, you see; defined the commonalty of the forest its limits of approximation to it like a celestial Mogul. The girth of this clearing in which it stands is the girth of its former greatness. No sapling even now dare set foot in the _sanctum sanctorum_. These forests have their traditions as men have.” “Perhaps modelled on ours.” “Perhaps. We shall see. Come here again in a year--two years; and if thou tell’st me this charmed circle has been broken into by the thicket, I will answer that elsewhere the people stand on the daïses of kings.” Again there seemed the theatrical posing. The speaker put a hand on the trunk of the great tree. “Here is the very _bienséance_ of vanity,” he said--“the archetype of society. Withered, denuded, worm-eaten to a shell, it yet decks its cap with a plume of green, wraps its palsy in a cloak of stars, and stands aloof like something desirable but not to be attained.” “A shell, you say? It looks solid as marble.” “It is a king, monsieur, without a heart. Some day when the storm rises it shall fall in upon itself. I know its hollowness from a boy. I have climbed fifty times this drooping bough here--which you may do now, if you will. Up there, where the branches strike from the main stem, one may look down into a deep well of decay.” He caught his hand away with a repelling exclamation. “Bah! it sprouts fungus at less than a man’s height; it is rotting to the roots. It shall take but a little heave of the tempest’s shoulder to send it sprawling.” Ned humoured the allegory with some contempt. “Thrones do not crash down so easily,” said he. “Their roots extend over the continents.” St Denys came from the tree, slid his arm under his guest’s, and drew his gentleman down an obscure track that ran into the thicket. “So you love kings?” said he. “I neither love nor decry them. I wish to walk independent, like a visitor from another star, availing myself of every opportunity of observation. I shall not swerve from my convictions when they are formed.” “And as far as you have got at present?” “I see more evil rising from the depths than descending from the heights. I see the peaks of volcanoes held responsible for the eruptions that are hatched by turbulent forces far down below--compelled to be their mouthpiece, indeed. Kings are what their people make them. Let the forces subside, and the very cones in time will come to pasture quiet flocks.” “Or let the lava overflow, overwhelm, and obliterate--distribute itself and grow cool. So shall the pasturage be infinitely more extended. Oh, inglorious conclusion! to justify individual evil on the score that it has no choice!”