many intolerable children put in their whole time in distressing
and idiotic effort to attract the attention of visitors; boys are
always “showing off”; apparently all men and women are glad and
grateful when they find that they have done a thing which has
lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused wondering
talk. This common madness can develop, by nurture, into a hunger
for notoriety in one, for fame in another. It is this madness
for being noticed and talked about which has invented kingship
and the thousand other dignities, and tricked them out with
pretty and showy fineries; it has made kings pick one another’s
pockets, scramble for one another’s crowns and estates, slaughter
one another’s subjects; it has raised up prize-fighters, and
poets, and villages mayors, and little and big politicians, and
big and little charity-founders, and bicycle champions, and
banditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons.
Anything to get notoriety; anything to set the village, or the
township, or the city, or the State, or the nation, or the planet
shouting, “Look–there he goes–that is the man!” And in five
minutes’ time, at no cost of brain, or labor, or genius this
mangy Italian tramp has beaten them all, transcended them all,
outstripped them all, for in time their names will perish; but by
the friendly help of the insane newspapers and courts and kings
and historians, his is safe and live and thunder in the world all
down the ages as long as human speech shall endure! Oh, if it
were not so tragic how ludicrous it would be!
She was so blameless, the Empress; and so beautiful, in mind
and heart, in person and spirit; and whether with a crown upon
her head or without it and nameless, a grace to the human race,
and almost a justification of its creation; WOULD be, indeed, but
that the animal that struck her down re-establishes the doubt.
In her character was every quality that in woman invites and
engages respect, esteem, affection, and homage. Her tastes, her
instincts, and her aspirations were all high and fine and all her
life her heart and brain were busy with activities of a noble
sort. She had had bitter griefs, but they did not sour her
spirit, and she had had the highest honors in the world’s gift,
but she went her simple way unspoiled. She knew all ranks, and
won them all, and made them her friends. An English fisherman’s
wife said, “When a body was in trouble she didn’t send her help,
she brought it herself.” Crowns have adorned others, but she
adorned her crowns.
It was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. And it is
marked by some curious contrasts. At noon last, Saturday there
was no one in the world who would have considered
acquaintanceship with him a thing worth claiming or mentioning;
no one would have been vain of such an acquaintanceship; the
humblest honest boot-black would not have valued the fact that he
had met him or seen him at some time or other; he was sunk in
abysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottom
grades of officialdom. Three hours later he was the one subject
of conversation in the world, the gilded generals and admirals
and governors were discussing him, all the kings and queens and
emperors had put aside their other interests to talk about him.
And wherever there was a man, at the summit of the world or the
bottom of it, who by chance had at some time or other come across
that creature, he remembered it with a secret satisfaction, and
MENTIONED it–for it was a distinction, now! It brings human
dignity pretty low, and for a moment the thing is not quite
realizable–but it is perfectly true. If there is a king who can
remember, now, that he once saw that creature in a time past, he
has let that fact out, in a more or less studiedly casual and
indifferent way, some dozens of times during the past week. For
a king is merely human; the inside of him is exactly like the
inside of any other person; and it is human to find satisfaction