you are a judge--judge of
all, both of goods and of persons--and you hold your baron's court. The
king has no right which you have not, except the privilege of coining
money. The king, designated by the Norman law as chief signor, has
justice, court, and coin. Coin is money. So that you, excepting in this
last, are as much a king in your lordship as he is in his kingdom. You
have the right, as a baron, to a gibbet with four pillars in England;
and, as a marquis, to a scaffold with seven posts in Sicily: that of the
mere lord having two pillars; that of a lord of the manor, three; and
that of a duke, eight. You are styled prince in the ancient charters of
Northumberland. You are related to the Viscounts Valentia in Ireland,
whose name is Power; and to the Earls of Umfraville in Scotland, whose
name is Angus. You are chief of a clan, like Campbell, Ardmannach, and
Macallummore. You have eight barons' courts--Reculver, Baston,
Hell-Kerters, Homble, Moricambe, Grundraith, Trenwardraith, and others.
You have a right over the turf-cutting of Pillinmore, and over the
alabaster quarries near Trent. Moreover, you own all the country of
Penneth Chase; and you have a mountain with an ancient town on it. The
town is called Vinecaunton; the mountain is called Moilenlli. All which
gives you an income of forty thousand pounds a year. That is to say,
forty times the five-and-twenty thousand francs with which a Frenchman
is satisfied."

Whilst Barkilphedro spoke, Gwynplaine, in a crescendo of stupor,
remembered the past. Memory is a gulf that a word can move to its lowest
depths. Gwynplaine knew all the words pronounced by Barkilphedro. They
were written in the last lines of the two scrolls which lined the van in
which his childhood had been passed, and, from so often letting his eyes
wander over them mechanically, he knew them by heart. On reaching, a
forsaken orphan, the travelling caravan at Weymouth, he had found the
inventory of the inheritance which awaited him; and in the morning, when
the poor little boy awoke, the first thing spelt by his careless and
unconscious eyes was his own title and its possessions. It was a strange
detail added to all his other surprises, that, during fifteen years,
rolling from highway to highway, the clown of a travelling theatre,
earning his bread day by day, picking up farthings, and living on
crumbs, he should have travelled with the inventory of his fortune
placarded over his misery.

Barkilphe