"
"You?" I said.
The Baronet shrugged his shoulders.
"St. Alban," he answered.
He got up and began to walk about the terrace. I sat with the
cup of tea cooling before me. The big man walked slowly with his
fingers linked behind him. Finally he stopped. His voice was
deep and reflective.
"`Man is altogether the sport of fortune!' . . . I read that in
Herodotus, in a form at Rugby. I never thought about it again.
But it's God's truth. St. Alban was at Rugby. I often wonder if
he remembered it. My word, he lived to verify it! Herodotus
couldn't cite a case to equal him. And the old Greek wasn't
hemmed in by the truth. I maintain that the man's case has no
parallel.
"To have all the painstaking labor of years negatived by one
enveloping, vicious misfortune; to be beaten out of life by it,
and at the same time to gain that monument out yonder and one's
niche as hero by the grim device of an enemy's satire; by the
acting of a scene that one would never have taken part in if one
had realized it, is beyond any complication of tragedy known to
the Greek.
"Look at the three strange phases of it: To be a mediocre
Englishman with no special talent; to die in horrible despair;
and to leave behind a glorious legend.
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