By no means were they the pick of humanity. Thieves many of them
had been, and murderers, evil-livers, and evil-doers. But the
nobility was there also, lying dormant, and their day came. Among
them must have been men who had cheated their neighbours over the
counter; men who had been cruel to their wives and children;
selfish, scandal-mongering women. In easier times their virtue
might never have been known to any but their Maker.
In every age and in every period, when and where Fate has called
upon men and women to play the man, human nature has not been found
wanting. They were a poor lot, those French aristocrats that the
Terror seized: cowardly, selfish, greedy had been their lives. Yet
there must have been good, even in them. When the little things
that in their little lives they had thought so great were swept away
from them, when they found themselves face to face with the
realities; then even they played the man. Poor shuffling Charles
the First, crusted over with weakness and folly, deep down in him at
last we find the great gentleman.
I like to hear stories of the littleness of great men. I like to
think that Shakespeare was fond of his glass. I even cling to the
tale of that disgraceful final orgie with friend Ben Jonson.
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