common people. An energetic lad, however poor, cannot spend his days in
going from one country to another without, by mere every-day chance,
becoming familiar with the outer life of royalties and courts. Marco had
stood in continental thoroughfares when visiting emperors rode by with
glittering soldiery before and behind them, and a populace shouting
courteous welcomes. He knew where in various great capitals the sentries
stood before kingly or princely palaces. He had seen certain royal faces
often enough to know them well, and to be ready to make his salute when
particular quiet and unattended carriages passed him by.

"It is well to know them. It is well to observe everything and to train
one's self to remember faces and circumstances," his father had said.
"If you were a young prince or a young man training for a diplomatic
career, you would be taught to notice and remember people and things
as you would be taught to speak your own language with elegance. Such
observation would be your most practical accomplishment and greatest
power. It is as practical for one man as another--for a poor lad in a
patched coat as for one whose place is to be in courts. As you cannot be
educated in the ordinary way, you must learn from travel and the world.
You must lose nothing--forget nothing."

It was his father who had taught him everything, and he had learned a
great deal. Loristan had the power of making all things interesting to
fascination. To Marco it seemed that he knew everything in the world.
They were not rich enough to buy many books, but Loristan knew the
treasures of all great cities, the resources of the smallest towns.
Together he and his boy walked through the endless galleries filled with
the wonders of the world, the pictures before which through centuries an
unbroken procession of almost worshiping eyes had passed uplifted.
Because his father made the pictures seem the glowing, burning work of