devouring ambitions of that most horrible of human monsters, the
princely unbeliever of the middle ages, who flourished again and again,
sporadically, from England to Constantinople, from Paris to Rome, but
who almost invariably ended in disastrous failure, overcome and trodden
down by the steadily advancing morality of mankind. Such men were John
the Twelfth, of the evil race of Theodora in Rome, and the Jewish
Pierleone who lived a hundred years later, and King John of England,
and last and greatest of all, perhaps, as he was most certainly the
worst, Caesar Borgia.

To be a gentleman when Henry Plantagenet was a boy of twelve, and
Gilbert Warde was going to the Duke of Normandy's court, implied not
many gifts, few principles, and two or three accomplishments at most;
but it meant the possession of those simple requirements in their very
best accepted form, and that species of thoroughness in a few matters
which has been at the root of social superiority in all ages. We have
heard of amateur artists, amateur soldiers, amateur statesmen; but no
one has ever heard of an amateur gentleman. Gilbert Warde knew little
Latin beyond the few prayers taught him by the manor priest at Stoke;
but in the efficacy of those prayers he believed with all his heart and
soul. The Norman French language of the nobles in England was no longer
that of their more refined cousins over the water; but though his
tongue betrayed him for an Englishman, Gilbert had the something which
was of more worth among his equals than a French accent--the grace, the
unaffected ease, the straightforward courtesy, which are bred in bone
and blood, like talent or genius, but which reach perfection only in
the atmosphere to which they belong, and among men and women who have
them in the same degree. Possessing belief and good manners, the third
essential was skill in arms, and, as has been seen, Gilbert was a match
for a swordsman of considerable reputation. The only absolutely