Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/259

“There are certain little courtesies. Custom demands that you render them to our person.”

“I plead pardon, Sire. I plead your permission to leave. I—I am ill.” He bowed himself from the room.

The King was smiling through his wine.

“How is it, John, that such a great soldier can be such a great fool?”

Said John Evelyn, “How could it be otherwise? If great men were not fools, the world would have been destroyed long ago. How could it be otherwise? Folly and distorted vision are the foundations of greatness.”

“You mean that my vision is distorted?”

“No, I do not mean that.”

“Then you imply—”

“I wish to go on with Henry Morgan. He has a knack for piracy which makes him great. Immediately you imagine him as a great ruler. You make him Lieutenant-Governor. In this you are like the multitude. You believe that if a man do one thing magnificently, he should be able to do all things equally well. If a man be eminently successful in creating an endless line of mechanical dew-dads of some excellence, you conceive him capable of leading armies or maintaining governments. You think that because you are a good king you should be as good a lover—or vice-versa.”

“Vice-versa?”

“That is a humorous alternative, Sire. It is a conversational trick to gain a smile—no more.”

“I see. But Morgan and his folly—”