There's a Lad, too, from York— but tho' he's a strange elf, / By gom! I respect him as much as myself,

Hard fighting and long labour they had still; for the Southrons were bold men and grim, and fierce in despair, and the Easterlings were strong and war-hardened and asked for no quarter.

The Kaiser beamed. Von Bulow had praised him. Von Bulow had exalted him and humbled himself. The Kaiser could forgive anything after that. Haven't I always told you, he exclaimed with enthusiasm, that we complete one another famously? We should stick together, and we will! … Von Bulow saved himself in time—but, canny diplomat that he was, he nevertheless had made one error: he should have begun by talking about his own shortcomings and Wilhelm's superiority—not by intimating that the Kaiser was a half-wit in need of a guardian.

He got so thoroughly into the jocund spirit that he didn’t much mind seeing Tanis drooping against the shoulder of the youngest and milkiest of the young men […]