a youth spent in arranging masques for a stupid
court, and an old age spent in disappointment. But then no English
monarch had ever begun and finished a palace. George wished, rather
venturesomely, that he had lived under Francis I!...

The largest and finest charitable institution! The ineffable William and
Mary had merely turned it into a charitable institution because they did
not know what else to do with it. The mighty halls which ought to have
resounded to the laughter of the mistresses of Charles II were diverted
to the inevitable squalor of almsgiving. The mutilated victims of the
egotism and the fatuity of kings were imprisoned there together under
the rules and regulations of charity, the cruellest of all rules and
regulations. And all was done meanly--that is, all that interested
George. Christopher Wren, who was building St. Paul's and fighting
libels and slanders at a salary of two hundred a year, came down to
Greenwich and for years worked immortally for nothing amid material
difficulties that never ceased to multiply; and he too was beaten by the
huge monster. Then Vanbrugh arrived and blithely finished in corrupt
brick and flaming manifestations of decadence that which the pure and
monumental genius of Inigo Jones had first conceived. The north
frontages were marvels of beauty; the final erections to the south
amounted to an outrage upon Jones and Wren. Still, the affair was the
largest and finest charitable institution on earth! What a country,
thought George, hugging injustice! So it had treated Jones and Wren and
many another. So it had treated Enwright. And so it would treat, was
already treating, him, George. He did not care. As the steamer
approached Greenwich, and the details of the aborted palace grew
clearer, and he could distinguish between the genius of Jones and the
genius of Wren, he felt grimly and victoriously sure that both Jones and
Wren had had the best of the struggle against indifference and
philistinism--as he too would have the best of the struggle, though he
should die obscure and in penury. He was miserable and resentful, and
yet he was triumphant. The steamer stopped at the town-pier.

"Are we there?" said Marguerite. "Already?"

"Yes," said he. "And I think we may as well go back by the same
steamer."

She concurred. However, an official insisted on them disembarking, even
if they meant to re-embark at once. They, went ashore. The facade of the
palace-hospital stretched maje