“How you yell, my baboons!” he cried; “How you screech about the rules of your lair! Wait till you hear! You surely do not suppose I sent the book out of any humility or loyalty, or desire for notice, do you? I sent it out of pure hate and scorn, to show him as a fool-Majesty, that there was something he could not do--something that should last when _he_ was forgotten!--a few burning lines that should, like vitriol, eat into his Throne and outlast it! I sent it some days ago, and got an acknowledgment from the flunkey who writes Majesty’s letters. But this afternoon I received a much more important document,--a letter from Eugène Silvano, secretary to our very honourable and trustworthy Premier! He informs me in set terms, that his Majesty the King has been pleased to appreciate my work as a poet, to the extent of offering me a hundred golden pieces a year for the term of my natural life! Ha-ha! A hundred golden pieces a year! And thus they would fasten this wild bird of Revolutionary song to a Royal cage, for a bit of sugar! A hundred golden pieces a year! It means food and lodging--warm blankets to sleep in--but it means something else,--loss of independence!” “Then you will not accept it?” said Pasquin Leroy, looking at him with interest over the rim of the glass from which he was just sipping his wine. “Accept it! I have already refused it! By swift return of post!” Shouts of “Bravo! bravo!” echoed around him on all sides; men sprang up and shook hands with him and patted him on the back, and even over the dark face of Sergius Thord there passed a bright illumining smile. “Zouche, with all thy faults, thou art a brave man!” said the young man with the Keats-like head, who was in reality confidential clerk to one of the largest stockbrokers in the metropolis; “A thousand times better to starve, than to accept Royal alms!” “To your health, Zouche!” said Lotys, leaning forward, glass in hand. “Your refusal of the King’s offered bounty is a greater tragedy than any you have ever tried to write!” “Hear her!” cried Zouche, exultant; “She knows exactly how to put it! For look you, there are the true elements of tragedy in a worn coat and scant food, while the thoughts that help nations to live or die are burning in one’s brain! Then comes a King with a handful of gold--and gold would be useful--it always is! But--by Heaven! to pay a poet for his poems is, as I said before, as if one were to meet the Deity on His way through space, scattering planets and solar systems at a touch, and then to say--‘Well done, God! We shall remunerate You for your creative power as long as You shall last--so much per aeon!’” Leroy laughed. “You wild soul!” he said; “Would you starve then, rather than accept a king’s bounty?”