"Be upstart enough," it seemed to say, "and all things are yours.
Believe yourself kingly, though your Ram-tah come from Hartford."
He walked vigorously toward that cross. It often eluded him as he
puzzled a way through the winding gray-walled streets. More than once he
was forced to turn back, to make laborious circuits. But never for long
was the cross out of sight.
Constantly as he walked that new truth ran in his mind, molten,
luminous. Who knew of Ram-tah's fictive origin, or even of Ram-tah at
all? No one but a witty scoundrel calling himself Balthasar.
Bean had become some one through a belief in himself. Ram-tah had been a
crude bit of scaffolding, and was well out of the way. The confidence he
had helped to build would now endure without his help. Be an upstart. A
convinced upstart. Such the world accepts.
Then he issued from the maze of narrow streets and confronted the tomb.
Through the open door, even at this early hour, people went and came.
The Corsican's magnetism prevailed. And he, Bunker Bean, the lowly, had
that same power to magnetize, to charm, to affront the world and yet
evoke monuments--if he could only believe it.
He went quickly through the iron gateway, up the long walk and took the
imposing stairway in leaps. Then, standing uncovered in that wonderfully
lit room, he gazed down at the upstart's mighty urn.
Long he stood under that spell of line and colour and magnitude, lost in
the spaciousness of it.
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