said; and then by a last and splendid effort of his
great sanity, looked the facts in the face.

"We must surrender," he said. "You could do nothing against fifty
thousand tons of water coming down a steep hill, ten minutes hence. We
must surrender. Our four thousand men might as well be four. _Vicisti
Galilaee!_ Perkins, you may as well get me another glass of wine."

In this way the vast army of South Kensington surrendered and the
Empire of Notting Hill began. One further fact in this connection is
perhaps worth mentioning--the fact that, after his victory, Adam Wayne
caused the great tower on Campden Hill to be plated with gold and
inscribed with a great epitaph, saying that it was the monument of
Wilfrid Lambert, the heroic defender of the place, and surmounted with
a statue, in which his large nose was done something less than justice
to.

BOOK V

CHAPTER I--_The Empire of Notting Hill_

On the evening of the third of October, twenty years after the great
victory of Notting Hill, which gave it the dominion of London, King
Auberon came, as of old, out of Kensington Palace.

He had changed little, save for a streak or two of grey in his hair,
for his face had always been old, and his step slow, and, as it were,
decrepit.

If he looked old, it was not because of anything physical or mental.
It was because he still wore, with a quaint conservatism, the
frock-coat and high hat of the days before the great war. "I have
survived the Deluge," he said. "I am a pyramid, and must behave as
such."

As he passed up the street the Kensingtonians, in their picturesque
blue smocks, saluted him as a King, and then looked after him as a
curiosity. It seemed odd to them that men had once worn so elvish an
attire.

The King, cultivating the walk attributed to the oldest inhabitant
("Gaffer Auberon" his friends were now confidentially desired to call
him), went toddling northward. He paused, with reminiscence in his
eye, at the Southern Gate of Notting Hill, one of those nine great
gates of bronze and steel, wrought with reliefs of the old battles, by
the hand of Chiffy himself.

"Ah!" he said, shaking his head and assuming an unnecessary air of
age, and a provincialism of accent--"Ah! I mind when there warn't none
of this here."

He passed through the Ossington Gate, surmounted by a great lion,
wrought in red copper on yellow brass, with the motto, "Nothing Ill."
The guard in red and gold saluted him wi