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 own heart, so is he." Must mean something. What?
Far down that wide avenue he came to a bridge of striking magnificence,
beset with golden sculpture. He supposed it to be one more tribute to
the sublime Corsican who had thought in his heart, and _was_.
He had the meaning of those words now.
He, Bunker Bean, had believed himself to be mean, insignificant. And so
he had been that. Then he had come to believe himself a king, and
straightway had he been kingly. The Corsican, detecting the falsity of
some Ram-tah, would have gone on believing in himself none the less. It
was all that mattered. "As a man thinketh--" If you came down to that,
nobody needed a Ram-tah at all.
From the centre of the bridge he raised his eyes and there, far off,
high above all those gray buildings, was the golden cross that he knew
to surmount the tomb. Sharply it glittered against the blue of the sky.
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