For it is written, that however powerful you be, you shall not
take the Winegod on board to entertain him as a simple passenger; and you
may captain your vessel, you may pilot it, and keep to your reckonings,
and steer for all the ports you have a mind to, even to doing profitable
exchange with Armenian and Jew, and still you shall do the something
more, which proves that the Winegod is on board: he is the pilot of your
blood if not the captain of your thoughts.

Mr. Fenellan was unused to the copious outpouring of Victor Radnor's
confidences upon his domestic affairs; and the unwonted excitement of
Victor's manner of speech would have perplexed him, had there not been
such a fiddling of the waltz inside him.

Payment for the turtle and the bottles of Old Veuve was performed apart
with Benjamin, while Simeon Fenellan strolled out of the house,
questioning a tumbled mind as to what description of suitable
entertainment, which would be dancing and flirting and fal-lallery in the
season of youth, London City could provide near meridian hours for a man
of middle age carrying his bottle of champagne, like a guest of an
old-fashioned wedding-breakfast. For although he could stand his wine as
well as his friend, his friend's potent capacity martially after the
feast to buckle to business at a sign of the clock, was beyond him. It
pointed to one of the embodied elements, hot from Nature's workshop. It
told of the endurance of powers, that partly explained the successful,
astonishing career of his friend among a people making urgent, if
unequal, demands perpetually upon stomach and head.

CHAPTER V

THE LONDON WALK WESTWARD

In that nationally interesting Poem, or Dramatic Satire, once famous, THE
RAJAH IN LONDON (London, Limbo and Sons, 1889), now obliterated under the
long wash of Press-matter, the reflection--not unknown to philosophical
observers, and natural perhaps in the mind of an Oriental
Prince--produced by his observation of the march of London citizens
Eastward at morn, Westward at eve, attributes their practice to a
survival of the Zoroastrian form of worship. His Minister, favourable to
the people or for the sake of fostering an idea in his Master's head,
remarks, that they show more than the fidelity of the sunflower to her
God. The Rajah, it would appear, frowns interrogatively, in the princely
fashion, accusing him of obscureness of speech:--princes and the louder
members of the grey public are frate