You don't want
to know the name of everybody whose roof you can see;
much less could you remember them, and talk about them,
and listen to gossip about them, year after year.
It isn't a passion in your blood to ride to hounds,
and to shoot, and all that. It doesn't come to you by
tradition--and you haven't the vacancy of mind which might
be a substitute for tradition. What are you doing in
the country, then? Just eating too much, and sitting about,
and getting fat and stupid. If you want the truth,
there it is for you."
Thorpe, putting out his lips judicially, inclined upon
reflection to the view that this was the truth.
"That's all right, as far as it goes," he assented,
with hesitation. "But what the hell else is there?"
The little Scotchman had grown too interested in his diagnosis
to drop it in an incomplete state. "A year ago," he went on,
"you had won your victories like a veritable Napoleon.
You had everything in your own hands; Napoleon himself was
not more the master of what he saw about him than you were.
And then what did you do? You voluntarily retired
yourself to your Elba. It wasn't that you were beaten
and driven there by others; you went of your own accord.
Have you ever thought, Thorpe, of this? Napoleon was
the greatest man of his age--one of the greatest men
of all ages--not only in war but in a hundred other ways.
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