he had had to take but a few steps to reach it. The two
peers, his sponsors, sat, one on his right, the other on his left, thus
almost concealing the presence of the new-comer.

No one having been furnished with any previous information, the Clerk of
the Parliament had read in a low voice, and as it were, mumbled through
the different documents concerning the new peer, and the Lord Chancellor
had proclaimed his admission in the midst of what is called, in the
reports, "general inattention." Every one was talking. There buzzed
through the House that cheerful hum of voices during which assemblies
pass things which will not bear the light, and at which they wonder when
they find out what they have done, too late.

Gwynplaine was seated in silence, with his head uncovered, between the
two old peers, Lord Fitzwalter and Lord Arundel. On entering, according
to the instructions of the King-at-Arms--afterwards renewed by his
sponsors--he had bowed to the throne.

Thus all was over. He was a peer. That pinnacle, under the glory of
which he had, all his life, seen his master, Ursus, bow himself down in
fear--that prodigious pinnacle was under his feet. He was in that place,
so dark and yet so dazzling in England. Old peak of the feudal mountain,
looked up to for six centuries by Europe and by history! Terrible
nimbus of a world of shadow! He had entered into the brightness of its
glory, and his entrance was irrevocable.

He was there in his own sphere, seated on his throne, like the king on
his. He was there and nothing in the future could obliterate the fact.
The royal crown, which he saw under the dais, was brother to his
coronet. He was a peer of that throne. In the face of majesty he was
peerage; less, but like. Yesterday, what was he? A player. To-day, what
was he? A prince.

Yesterday, nothing; to-day, everything.

It was a sudden confrontation of misery and power, meeting face to face,
and resolving themselves at once into the two halves of a conscience.
Two spectres, Adversity and Prosperity, were taking possession of the
same soul, and each drawing that soul towards itself.

Oh, pathetic division of an intellect, of a will, of a brain, between
two brothers who are enemies! the Phantom of Poverty and the Phantom of
Wealth! Abel and Cain in the same man!

CHAPTER V.

ARISTOCRATIC GOSSIP.

By degrees the seats of the House filled as the Lords arrived. The
question was the vote for augmenting, by a hundr