Then he noticed at the circle's centre a lofty column wrought in bronze with infinite small detail. Surmounting that column was the figure of the Corsican. An upstart who had prevailed!
He left the circle, lest he be apprehended by the Breedes. Soon he was again in that vast avenue of the park-places where he had slept. And now, far off on this splendid highway, he descried a mighty arch. Sternly gray and beautiful it was. And when, standing under it, he looked aloft to its mighty façade, its grandeur seemed threatening to him. He knew what that arch was—another monument imposed upon the city by the imperial assassin—without royal lineage since the passing of Ram-tah.
"Some class to that upstart!" he muttered. And if Napoleon had been no one, was it not probable that Bean had not been even Napoleon. The Countess Casanova had doubtless deceived him, though perhaps unintentionally. She had seemed a kind woman, he thought, but you couldn't tell about her controls.
His mind was being washed in that wondrous sunlight.
He was himself an upstart. No doubt about it. But what of it? Here were columns and arches to commemorate the most egregious of all upstarts. Upstarts were men who believed in themselves.
He retraced his steps from the arch.
Curious thing that scoundrel Watkins had kept saying on the boat. "As a man thinketh in his
