Payment for the turtle and the bottles of Old Veuve was performed apart with Benjamin, while Simeon Fenellan strolled out of the house, questioning a tumbled mind as to what description of suitable entertainment, which would be dancing and flirting and fal-lallery in the season of youth, London City could provide near meridian hours for a man of middle age carrying his bottle of champagne, like a guest of an old-fashioned wedding-breakfast.  For although he could stand his wine as well as his friend, his friend’s potent capacity martially after the feast to buckle to business at a sign of the clock, was beyond him.  It pointed to one of the embodied elements, hot from Nature’s workshop.  It told of the endurance of powers, that partly explained the successful, astonishing career of his friend among a people making urgent, if unequal, demands perpetually upon stomach and head.

CHAPTER V

THE LONDON WALK WESTWARD

In that nationally interesting Poem, or Dramatic Satire, once famous, the rajah in London (London, Limbo and Sons, 1889), now obliterated under the long wash of Press-matter, the reflection—­not unknown to philosophical observers, and natural perhaps in the mind of an Oriental Prince—­produced by his observation of the march of London citizens Eastward at morn, Westward at eve, attributes their practice to a survival of the Zoroastrian form of worship.  His Minister, favourable to the people or for the sake of fostering an idea in his Master’s head, remarks, that they show more than the fidelity of the sunflower to her God.  The Rajah, it would appear, frowns interrogatively, in the princely fashion, accusing him of obscureness of speech:—­princes and the louder members of the grey public are fraternally instant to spurn at the whip of that which they do not immediately comprehend.  It is explained by the Minister:  not even the flower, he says, would hold constant, as they, to the constantly unseen—­a trebly cataphractic Invisible.  The Rajah professes curiosity to know how it is that the singular people nourish their loyalty, since they cannot attest to the continued being of the object in which they put their faith.  He is informed by his prostrate servant of a settled habit they have of diligently seeking their Divinity, hidden above, below; and of copiously taking inside them doses of what is denied to their external vision:  thus they fortify credence chemically on an abundance of meats and liquors; fire they eat, and they drink fire; they become consequently instinct with fire.  Necessarily therefore they believe in fire.  Believing, they worship.  Worshipping, they march Eastward at morn, Westward at eve.  For that way lies the key, this way the cupboard, of the supplies, their fuel.

According to Stage directions, the rajah and his minister Enter a Gin-Palace.—­It is to witness a service that they have learnt to appreciate as Anglicanly religious.