admiring throng, his grave face was seen to be wreathed in complacent
smiles. His hair, which had turned white soon after he was thirty, gave
him a dignified and almost venerable appearance, although he was only in
his forty-third year; and combined with his handsome and commanding
presence to excite immense enthusiasm among the Spaniards. They forgot
for the moment what they had formerly remembered and were to remember
again--that he was a foreigner, an Italian, a man of no family and of
poor origin. They saw in him the figure-head of a new empire and a new
glory, an emblem of power and riches, of the dominion which their proud
souls loved; and so there beamed upon him the brief fickle sunshine of
their smiles and favour, which he in his delusion regarded as an earnest
of their permanent honour and esteem.

It is almost always thus with a man not born to such dignities, and who
comes by them through his own efforts and labours. No one would grudge
him the short-lived happiness of these summer weeks; but although he
believed himself to be as happy as a man can be, he appears to quietly
contemplating eyes less happy and fortunate than when he stood alone on
the deck of his ship, surrounded by an untrustworthy crew, prevailing by
his own unaided efforts over the difficulties and dangers with which he
was surrounded. Court functions and processions, and the companionship
of kings and cardinals, are indeed no suitable reward for the kind of
work that he did. Courtly dignities are suited to courtly services; but
they are no suitable crown for rough labour and hardship at sea, or for
the fulfilment of a man's self by lights within him; no suitable crown
for any solitary labour whatsoever, which must always be its own and only
reward.


It is to this period of splendour that the story of the egg, which is to