The men, of course, quickly discovered his superior education, but that did not in the least surprise them, it being extremely common for unfortunate people to descend by degrees to menial offices, if once they left the estate and homestead to which they naturally belonged.  There as cadets, however humble, they were certain of outward respect:  once outside the influence of the head of the house, and they were worse off than the lowest retainer.  His fellows would have resented any show of pride, and would speedily have made his life intolerable.  As he showed none, they almost petted him, but at the same time expected him to do more than his share of the work.

Felix listened with amazement to the revelations (revelations to him) of the inner life of the camp and court.  The king’s weaknesses, his inordinate gluttony and continual intoxication, his fits of temper, his follies and foibles, seemed as familiar to these grooms as if they had dwelt with him.  As for the courtiers and barons, there was not one whose vices and secret crimes were not perfectly well known to them.  Vice and crime must have their instruments; instruments are invariably indiscreet, and thus secrets escape.  The palace intrigues, the intrigues with other states, the influence of certain women, there was nothing which they did not know.

Seen thus from below, the whole society appeared rotten and corrupted, coarse to the last degree, and animated only by the lowest motives.  This very gossip seemed in itself criminal to Felix, but he did not at the moment reflect that it was but the tale of servants.  Had such language been used by gentlemen, then it would have been treason.  As himself of noble birth, Felix had hitherto seen things only from the point of view of his own class.  Now he associated with grooms, he began to see society from their point of view, and recognised how feebly it was held together by brute force, intrigue, cord and axe, and woman’s flattery.  But a push seemed needed to overthrow it.  Yet it was quite secure, nevertheless, as there was none to give that push, and if any such plot had been formed, those very slaves who suffered the most would have been the very men to give information, and to torture the plotters.

Felix had never dreamed that common and illiterate men, such as these grooms and retainers, could have any conception of reasons of State, or the crafty designs of courts.  He now found that, though they could neither writer nor read, they had learned the art of reading man (the worst and lowest side of character) to such perfection that they at once detected the motive.  They read the face; the very gait and gesture gave them a clue.  They read man, in fact, as an animal.  They understood men just as they understood the horses and hounds under their charge.  Every mood and vicious indication in those animals was known to them, and so, too, with their masters.

Felix thought that he was himself a hunter, and understood woodcraft; he now found how mistaken he had been.  He had acquired woodcraft as a gentleman; he now learned the knave’s woodcraft.  They taught him a hundred tricks of which he had had no idea.  They stripped man of his dignity, and nature of her refinement.  Everything had a blackguard side to them.  He began to understand that high principles and abstract theories were only words with the mass of men.