But to them, let us be thankful, he never lived. They thought he
lived, but he was as dead then as he is now and as he always will be.
He could not help it because he became the vogue, and it is easily
understood. When he lay ill, fighting with close grapples with
death, those who knew him were grieved. They were many, and in many
voices, to the rim of the Seven Seas, they spoke their grief.
Whereupon, and with celerity, the mob-minded mass began to inquire as
to this man whom so many mourned. If everybody else mourned, it were
fit that they mourn too. So a vast wail went up. Each was a spur to
the other's grief, and each began privately to read this man they had
never read and publicly to proclaim this man they had always read.
And straightaway next day they drowned their grief in a sea of
historical romance and forgot all about him. The reaction was
inevitable. Emerging from the sea into which they had plunged, they
became aware that they had so soon forgotten him, and would have been
ashamed, had not the fluttering, chirping men said, "Come, let us
bury him.
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