“I would!” answered Paul. “Look you, my brave Pasquin! Read back over all the centuries, and see the way in which these puppets we call kings have rewarded the greatest thinkers of their times! Is it anywhere recorded that the antique virgin, Elizabeth of England, ever did anything for Shakespeare? True--he might have been ‘graciously permitted’ to act one of his sublime tragedies before her--by Heaven!--she was only fit to be his scrubbing woman, by intellectual comparison! Kings and Queens have always trembled in their shoes, and on their thrones, before the might of the pen!--and it is natural therefore that they should ignore it as much as conveniently possible. A general, whose military tactics succeed in killing a hundred thousand innocent men receives a peerage and a hundred thousand a year,--a speculator who snatches territory and turns it into stock-jobbing material, is called an ‘Empire Builder’; but the man whose Thought destroys or moulds a new World, and raises up a new Civilization, is considered beneath a crowned Majesty’s consideration! ‘Beneath,’ by Heaven!--I, Paul Zouche, may yet mount behind Majesty’s chair, and with a single rhyme send his crown spinning into space! Meanwhile, I have flung back his hundred golden pieces, with as much force in the edge of my pen as there would be in my hand if _you_ were his Majesty sitting there, and I flung them across the table now!” Again Leroy laughed. His eyes flashed, but there was a certain regret and wistfulness in them. “You approve, of course?” he said, turning to Sergius Thord. Sergius looked for a moment at Zouche with an infinitely grave and kindly compassion. “I think Paul has acted bravely;” he then said slowly; “He has been true to the principles of our Order. And under the circumstances, it must have been difficult for him to refuse what would have been a certain competence,--” “Not difficult, Sergius!” exclaimed Zouche, “But purely triumphant!” Thord smiled,--then went on--“You see, my friend,” and he addressed himself now to Leroy; “Kings have scorned the power of the pen too long! Those who possess that power are now taking vengeance for neglect. Thousands of pens all over the world to-day are digging the grave of Royalty, and building up the throne of Democracy. Who is to blame? Royalty itself is to blame, for deliberately passing over the claims of art and intellect, and giving preference to the claims of money. The moneyed man is ever the friend of Majesty,--but the brilliant man of letters is left out in the cold. Yet it is the man of letters who chronicles the age, and who will do so, we may be sure, according to his own experience. As the King treats the essayist, the romancist or the historian, so will these recording scribes treat the King!” “It is possible, though,” suggested Leroy, “that the King meant well in his offer to our friend Zouche?”