I saw the younger sons carry the royal blood far down among the people, down even into the kennels of the outcast.

Generations follow, oblivious of the high beginnings, but there is that in the stock which is fated to endure.

The sons and daughters blunder and sin and perish, but the race goes on, for there is a fierce stuff of life in it.

It sinks and rises again and blossoms at haphazard into virtue or vice, since the ordinary moral laws do not concern its mission.

Some rags of greatness always cling to it, the dumb faith that sometime and somehow that blood drawn from kings it never knew will be royal again.