Whether the fancy will
be fulfilled, I cannot tell--still less whether the scene that, led by
memory, I lay for my new exploits will be the true one--for I love to
see myself once again in the crowded streets of Strelsau, or beneath the
frowning keep of the Castle of Zenda.
Thus led, my broodings leave the future, and turn back on the past.
Shapes rise before me in long array--the wild first revel with the King,
the rush with my brave tea-table, the night in the moat, the pursuit in
the forest: my friends and my foes, the people who learnt to love and
honour me, the desperate men who tried to kill me. And, from amidst
these last, comes one who alone of all of them yet moves on earth,
though where I know not, yet plans (as I do not doubt) wickedness, yet
turns women's hearts to softness and men's to fear and hate. Where is
young Rupert of Hentzau--the boy who came so nigh to beating me? When
his name comes into my head, I feel my hand grip and the blood move
quicker through my veins: and the hint of Fate--the presentiment--seems
to grow stronger and more definite, and to whisper insistently in my ear
that I have yet a hand to play with young Rupert; therefore I exercise
myself in arms, and seek to put off the day when the vigour of youth
must leave me.
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