ed at Brissago after they had proclaimed the
unity of the world. Every evening after that the assembly dined together
and talked at their ease and grew accustomed to each other and sharpened
each other's ideas, and every day they worked together, and really for
a time believed that they were inventing a new government for the world.
They discussed a constitution. But there were matters needing attention
too urgently to wait for any constitution. They attended to these
incidentally. The constitution it was that waited. It was presently
found convenient to keep the constitution waiting indefinitely as King
Egbert had foreseen, and meanwhile, with an increasing self-confidence,
that council went on governing....

On this first evening of all the council's gatherings, after King Egbert
had talked for a long time and drunken and praised very abundantly the
simple red wine of the country that Leblanc had procured for them,
he fathered about him a group of congenial spirits and fell into a
discourse upon simplicity, praising it above all things and declaring
that the ultimate aim of art, religion, philosophy, and science alike
was to simplify. He instanced himself as a devotee to simplicity. And
Leblanc he instanced as a crowning instance of the splendour of this
quality. Upon that they all agreed.

When at last the company about the tables broke up, the king found
himself brimming over with a peculiar affection and admiration for
Leblanc, he made his way to him and drew him aside and broached what he
declared was a small matter. There was, he said, a certain order in his
gift that, unlike all other orders and decorations in the world,
had never been corrupted. It was reserved for elderly men of supreme
distinction, the acuteness of whose gifts was already touched to
mellowness, and it had included the greatest names of every age so
far as the advisers of his family had been able to ascertain them.
At present, the king admitted, these matters of stars and badges were
rather obscured by more urgent affairs, for his own part he had never
set any value upon them at all, but a time might come when they would
be at least interesting, and in short he wished to confer the Order
of Merit upon Leblanc. His sole motive in doing so, he added, was his
strong desire to signalise his personal esteem. He laid his hand
upon the Frenchman's shoulder as he said these things, with an almost
brotherly affection. Leblanc received this proposal wi