re I begin.

"We will send it to you on Monday."

"If you want the book," I replied, "you will have to give it to me
today as I am disappearing to write it." They gave it.

Frances meanwhile sat at home thinking, as she told me, hard thoughts
of his disappearance with their only remaining coin. And then
dramatically he appeared with twenty golden sovereigns and poured
them into her lap. Referring to this incident later, Gilbert said,
"What a fool a man is, when he comes to the last ditch, not to spend
the last farthing to satisfy the inner man before he goes out to
fight a battle with wits." But it was his way to let the money
shortage become acute and then deal with it abruptly. Frank
Swinnerton relates that when, as a small boy, he was working for J.
M. Dent, Gilbert appeared after office hours with a Dickens preface
but refused to leave it because Swinnerton, the only soul left in the
place, could not give him the agreed remuneration.

The _Napoleon_ is the story of a war between the London suburbs, and
grew largely from his meditations on the Boer War. Besides being the
best of his fantastic stories, it contains the most picturesque
account of Chesterton's social philosophy that he ever gave. But it
certainly puzzled some of the critics. One American reviewer feels
that he might have understood the book if he "had an intimate
knowledge of the history of the various boroughs of London and of
their present-day characteristics." Others treat the story as a mere
joke, and many feel that it is a bad descent after the _Browning_.
"Too infernally clever for anything," says one.

Auberon Quin, King of England, chosen by lot (as are all kings and
all other officials by the date of this story, which is a romance of
the future), is one of the two heroes of this book. He is simply a
sense of humour incarnate. His little elfish face and figure was
recognised by old Paulines as suggested by a form master of their
youth; but by the entire reviewing world as Max Beerbohm. The
illustrations by Graham Robertson were held to be unmistakably Max.
Frances notes in her diary:

A delightful dinner party at the Lanes. . . . The talk was mostly
about _Napoleon_. Max took me in to dinner and was really nice. He is
a good fellow. His costume was extraordinary. Why should an evening
waistcoat have four large white pearl buttons and why should he look
that peculiar shape? He seems only pleased at the way he has be