except the privilege of coining money.  The king, designated by the Norman law as chief signor, has justice, court, and coin.  Coin is money.  So that you, excepting in this last, are as much a king in your lordship as he is in his kingdom.  You have the right, as a baron, to a gibbet with four pillars in England; and, as a marquis, to a scaffold with seven posts in Sicily:  that of the mere lord having two pillars; that of a lord of the manor, three; and that of a duke, eight.  You are styled prince in the ancient charters of Northumberland.  You are related to the Viscounts Valentia in Ireland, whose name is Power; and to the Earls of Umfraville in Scotland, whose name is Angus.  You are chief of a clan, like Campbell, Ardmannach, and Macallummore.  You have eight barons’ courts—­Reculver, Baston, Hell-Kerters, Homble, Moricambe, Grundraith, Trenwardraith, and others.  You have a right over the turf-cutting of Pillinmore, and over the alabaster quarries near Trent.  Moreover, you own all the country of Penneth Chase; and you have a mountain with an ancient town on it.  The town is called Vinecaunton; the mountain is called Moilenlli.  All which gives you an income of forty thousand pounds a year.  That is to say, forty times the five-and-twenty thousand francs with which a Frenchman is satisfied.”

Whilst Barkilphedro spoke, Gwynplaine, in a crescendo of stupor, remembered the past.  Memory is a gulf that a word can move to its lowest depths.  Gwynplaine knew all the words pronounced by Barkilphedro.  They were written in the last lines of the two scrolls which lined the van in which his childhood had been passed, and, from so often letting his eyes wander over them mechanically, he knew them by heart.  On reaching, a forsaken orphan, the travelling caravan at Weymouth, he had found the inventory of the inheritance which awaited him; and in the morning, when the poor little boy awoke, the first thing spelt by his careless and unconscious eyes was his own title and its possessions.  It was a strange detail added to all his other surprises, that, during fifteen years, rolling from highway to highway, the clown of a travelling theatre, earning his bread day by day, picking up farthings, and living on crumbs, he should have travelled with the inventory of his fortune placarded over his misery.

Barkilphedro touched the casket on the table with his forefinger.

“My lord, this casket contains two thousand guineas which her gracious Majesty the Queen has sent you for your present wants.”

Gwynplaine made a movement.

“That shall be for my Father Ursus,” he said.

“So be it, my lord,” said Barkilphedro.  “Ursus, at the Tadcaster Inn.  The Serjeant of the Coif, who accompanied us hither, and is about to return immediately, will carry them to him.  Perhaps I may go to London myself.  In that case I will take charge of it.”

“I shall take them to him myself,” said Gwynplaine.