You could have knocked the Paladin down with a feather.  He seemed to actually turn pale.  He worked his lips a moment without getting anything out; then it came: 

“I didn’t know that, nor the half of it; how could I?  I’ve been an idiot.  I see it now—­I’ve been an idiot.  I met them this morning, and sung out hello to them just as I would to anybody.  I didn’t mean to be ill-mannered, but I didn’t know the half of this that you’ve been telling.  I’ve been an ass.  Yes, that is all there is to it—­I’ve been an ass.”

Noel Rainguesson said, in a kind of weary way: 

“Yes, that is likely enough; but I don’t see why you should seem surprised at it.”

“You don’t, don’t you?  Well, why don’t you?”

“Because I don’t see any novelty about it.  With some people it is a condition which is present all the time.  Now you take a condition which is present all the time, and the results of that condition will be uniform; this uniformity of result will in time become monotonous; monotonousness, by the law of its being, is fatiguing.  If you had manifested fatigue upon noticing that you had been an ass, that would have been logical, that would have been rational; whereas it seems to me that to manifest surprise was to be again an ass, because the condition of intellect that can enable a person to be surprised and stirred by inert monotonousness is a—­”

“Now that is enough, Noel Rainguesson; stop where you are, before you get yourself into trouble.  And don’t bother me any more for some days or a week an it please you, for I cannot abide your clack.”

“Come, I like that!  I didn’t want to talk.  I tried to get out of talking.  If you didn’t want to hear my clack, what did you keep intruding your conversation on me for?”

“I?  I never dreamed of such a thing.”

“Well, you did it, anyway.  And I have a right to feel hurt, and I do feel hurt, to have you treat me so.  It seems to me that when a person goads, and crowds, and in a manner forces another person to talk, it is neither very fair nor very good-mannered to call what he says clack.”

“Oh, snuffle—­do! and break your heart, you poor thing.  Somebody fetch this sick doll a sugar-rag.  Look you, Sir Jean de Metz, do you feel absolutely certain about that thing?”

“What thing?”

“Why, that Jean and Pierre are going to take precedence of all the lay noblesse hereabouts except the Duke d’Alencon?”

“I think there is not a doubt of it.”

The Standard-Bearer was deep in thoughts and dreams a few moments, then the silk-and-velvet expanse of his vast breast rose and fell with a sigh, and he said: 

“Dear, dear, what a lift it is!  It just shows what luck can do.  Well, I don’t care.  I shouldn’t care to be a painted accident—­I shouldn’t value it.  I am prouder to have climbed up to where I am just by sheer natural merit than I would be to ride the very sun in the zenith and have to reflect that I was nothing but a poor little accident, and got shot up there out of somebody else’s catapult.  To me, merit is everything—­in fact, the only thing.  All else is dross.”