would be the fame of their titles, their deeds of arms, their magnificent
armour, their expeditions to the Holy Land, their alliances, their claims
to remote antiquity, their conquests once complete, now long ago
annulled? Where would be all those grand claims to historic fame without
these parchments? Nowhere at all. Those high and mighty barons, those
great dukes and princes, would be as if they had never been--they and
everything that related to them far and near. Their strong castles,
their palaces, their fortresses fall and moulder away into masses of
ruin, vague remembrancers! Of all that greatness one monument alone
remains--the chronicles, the songs of bards and minnesingers. Parchment
alone remains!"

He sat silent for a moment, and then pursued his reflections.

"And in those distant times, while knights and squires rode out to war,
and fought and conquered or fought and fell over the possession of a nook
in a forest, or a title, or a smaller matter still, with what scorn and
contempt did they not look down upon the wretched little scribbler, the
man of mere letters and jargon, half-clothed in untanned hides, his only
weapon an inkhorn at his belt, his pennon the feather of a goosequill!
How they laughed at him, calling him an atom or a flea, good for nothing!
'He does nothing, he cannot even collect our taxes, or look after our
estates, whilst we bold riders, armed to the teeth, sword in hand and
lance on thigh, we fight, and we are the finest fellows in the land!' So
they said when they saw the poor devil dragging himself on foot after
their horses' heels, shivering in winter and sweating in summer, rusting
and decaying in old age. Well, what has happened? That flea, that vermin,
has kept them in the memory of men longer than their castles stood, long
after their arms and their armour had rusted in the ground. I love those
old parchments. I respect and revere them. Like ivy, they clothe the