There is
a temptation to consider ourselves exceptionally fine fellows, and
masterful men, and all the rest of it. We are not. I doubt if we should
average out as anything abler than any other casually selected body
of ninety-odd men. We are no creators, we are consequences, we are
salvagers--or salvagees. The thing to-day is not ourselves but the wind
of conviction that has blown us hither....'
The American had to confess he could hardly agree with the king's
estimate of their average.
'Holster, perhaps, and one or two others, might lift us a little,' the
king conceded. 'But the rest of us?'
His eyes flitted once more towards Leblanc.
'Look at Leblanc,' he said. 'He's just a simple soul. There are
hundreds and thousands like him. I admit, a certain dexterity, a certain
lucidity, but there is not a country town in France where there is not a
Leblanc or so to be found about two o'clock in its principal cafe. It's
just that he isn't complicated or Super-Mannish, or any of those things
that has made all he has done possible. But in happier times, don't
you think, Wilhelm, he would have remained just what his father was,
a successful epicier, very clean, very accurate, very honest. And on
holidays he would have gone out with Madame Leblanc and her knitting
in a punt with a jar of something gentle and have sat under a large
reasonable green-lined umbrella and fished very neatly and successfully
for gudgeon.
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