The Napoleon of Notting Hill
"Ah!" said the King; and looked at him with an unfathomable quietness.
"I thought nothing of being a grocer then," he said. "Isn't that odd enough for anybody? I thought nothing of all the wonderful places that my goods come from, and wonderful ways that they are made. I did not know that I was for all practical purposes a king with slaves spearing fishes near the secret-pool, and gathering fruits in the islands under the world. My mind was a blank on the thing. I was as mad as a hatter."
The King turned also, and stared out into the dark, where the great lamps that commemorated the battle were already flaming.
"And is this the end of poor old Wayne?" he said, half to himself. "To inflame every one so much that he is lost himself in the blaze. Is this his victory, that he, my incomparable Wayne, is now only one in a world of Waynes? Has he conquered and become by conquest commonplace? Must Mr. Mead, the grocer, talk as high as he? Lord! what a strange world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad."
And he went dreamily out of the shop.
He paused outside the next one almost precisely as the Provost had done two decades before.
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