But I persevered, and studied them as I had studied the old ones, and in time I began to feel as if perhaps they were true.

My chief weariness with them came from the way they had of referring to the things I was so intimate with as though they were only the unauthenticated history of a life so long passed by that it could no longer matter to any one.

So often the greatest hours of great lives were treated as possible legends.

I knew why men had died or were killed or had borne black horror.

I knew because I had read old books and manuscripts and had heard the stories which had come down through centuries by word of mouth, passed from father to son.
But there was one man who did not write as if he believed the world had begun and would end with him.