Gwynplaine was seated in silence, with his head uncovered, between the two old peers, Lord Fitzwalter and Lord Arundel.  On entering, according to the instructions of the King-at-Arms—­afterwards renewed by his sponsors—­he had bowed to the throne.

Thus all was over.  He was a peer.  That pinnacle, under the glory of which he had, all his life, seen his master, Ursus, bow himself down in fear—­that prodigious pinnacle was under his feet.  He was in that place, so dark and yet so dazzling in England.  Old peak of the feudal mountain, looked up to for six centuries by Europe and by history!  Terrible nimbus of a world of shadow!  He had entered into the brightness of its glory, and his entrance was irrevocable.

He was there in his own sphere, seated on his throne, like the king on his.  He was there and nothing in the future could obliterate the fact.  The royal crown, which he saw under the dais, was brother to his coronet.  He was a peer of that throne.  In the face of majesty he was peerage; less, but like.  Yesterday, what was he?  A player.  To-day, what was he?  A prince.

Yesterday, nothing; to-day, everything.

It was a sudden confrontation of misery and power, meeting face to face, and resolving themselves at once into the two halves of a conscience.  Two spectres, Adversity and Prosperity, were taking possession of the same soul, and each drawing that soul towards itself.

Oh, pathetic division of an intellect, of a will, of a brain, between two brothers who are enemies! the Phantom of Poverty and the Phantom of Wealth!  Abel and Cain in the same man!

CHAPTER V.

ARISTOCRATIC GOSSIP.

By degrees the seats of the House filled as the Lords arrived.  The question was the vote for augmenting, by a hundred thousand pounds sterling, the annual income of George of Denmark, Duke of Cumberland, the queen’s husband.  Besides this, it was announced that several bills assented to by her Majesty were to be brought back to the House by the Commissioners of the Crown empowered and charged to sanction them.  This raised the sitting to a royal one.  The peers all wore their robes over their usual court or ordinary dress.  These robes, similar to that which had been thrown over Gwynplaine, were alike for all, excepting that the dukes had five bands of ermine, trimmed with gold; marquises, four; earls and viscounts, three; and barons, two.  Most of the lords entered in groups.  They had met in the corridors, and were continuing the conversations there begun.  A few came in alone.  The costumes of all were solemn; but neither their attitudes nor their words corresponded with them.  On entering, each one bowed to the throne.