from past experience that if it came to blows he
was no match for Paul, but hitherto, having shown fight, he had
received the support of the gang. Now, however, there was an
extraordinary quality in Paul's defiance which took the spirit out of
him. Once more he was urged by the ragged brats to deeds of blood. He
did not respond. Paul kicked him again before his followers. If he
could have gone on kicking him for ever and ever what delirium of joy
were eternity! Billy edged farther away. The mongrel game-cock was
beaten. Paul, dramatically conscious of what the unrecognized prince
would do in such a circumstance, advanced, smacked his face, plucked
the cocked hat from his head, the sword from his hand, and invested
himself with these insignia of leadership, Billy melted silently into
the subfusc air of Budge Street. The ragged regiment looked around and
there was no Billy. Paul Keg worthy, the raggedest of them all, with
nothing to recommend him but his ridiculous exotic beauty and the paper
and wooden spolia opima of the vanquished, stood before them, a
tattered Caesar. The gang hung spellbound. They were ready, small band
of heroes, to follow him against the hordes of Stamford Street. They
only awaited his signal. Paul tasted a joy known but to few of the sons
of men-absolute power over, and supreme contempt for, his fellows. He
stood for a moment or two, in the grey, miserable street discordant
with the wailings of babies and the clamour of futile little girls,
who, after the manner of women, had no idea of political crisis, and
the shrill objurgations of slattern mothers and the raucous cries of an
idealist vendor of hyacinths, and, cocked hat on head and wooden sword
in hand, he looked at his fawning army. Then came the touch of genius
that was often to characterize his actions in after years. It was
mimetic, as he had read of such a thing in his paper-covered
textbooks-but it was none the less a touch of genius. He frowned on the
dirty, ignoble little boys. What had he in common with them-he, the son
of a prince? Nothing. He snapped his sword across his knee, tore his
cocked hat in two, and, casting the fragments before them, marched
proudly toward the very last place on the face of the earth that he
desired to visit-his own home. The army remained for a few seconds
bewildered by the dramatic and unexpected, and, leaderless, did what
many a real army has done in similar circumstances, straggled into
disintegration.