 king should do it were a most strange madness
and not comprehensible to any.«
    »I yield. Proceed, sir Chief of the Herald's College.«
    The Chairman resumed, as follows:
    »By what illustrious achievement for the honor of the Throne and State did
the founder of your great line lift himself to the sacred dignity of the British
nobility?«
    »He built a brewery.«
    »Sire, the Board finds this candidate perfect in all the requirements and
qualifications for military command, and doth hold his case open for decision
after due examination of his competitor.«
    The competitor came forward and proved exactly four generations of nobility
himself. So there was a tie, in military qualifications that far.
    He stood aside, a moment, and Sir Pertipole was questioned further:
    »Of what condition was the wife of the founder of your line?«
    »She came of the highest landed gentry, yet she was not noble; she was
gracious, and pure, and charitable, of a blameless life and character, insomuch
that in these regards was she peer of the best lady in the land.«
    »That will do. Stand down.« He called up the competing lordling again, and
asked: »What was the rank and condition of the great-grandmother who conferred
British nobility upon your great house?«
    »She was a king's leman, and did climb to that splendid eminence by her own
unholpen merit from the sewer where she was born.«
    »Ah, this indeed is true nobility, this is the right and perfect
intermixture. The lieutenancy is yours, fair lord. Hold it not in contempt; it
is the humble step which will lead to grandeurs more worthy of the splendor of
an origin like to thine.«
    I was down in the bottomless pit of humiliation. I had promised myself an
easy and zenith-scouring triumph, and this was the outcome! I was almost ashamed
to look my poor disappointed cadet in the face. I told him to go home and be
patient, this wasn't the end.
    I had a private audience with the king, and made a proposition. I said it
was quite right to officer that regiment with nobilities, and he couldn't have
done a wiser thing. It would also be a good idea to add five hundred officers to
it, in fact, add as many officers as there were nobles and relatives of nobles
in the country, even if there should finally be five times as many officers as
privates in it; and thus make it the crack regiment, the envied regiment
