Page:Through a Glass Lightly (1897, Greg).djvu/36

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THROUGH A GLASS LIGHTLY

names and yet so poor withal that, if truth were told, the most of these holds are unfurnished and dismantled, and many are not in France at all, but (alas!) in Spain. The soil of his garden is of such magnificent sterility that any of less lineage would starve. Yet has he such a grace as, search God’s most fruitful valleys as you may, you shall never find again; for it is the grace of gentle blood that is unadulterated with the prosperity of richness. What boots it that, flushed with the fat of Californian uplands, or bloated with the middle-class pride of Australian vineyards, these Colonial braggarts would seek to disinherit their brother of Bordeaux? They cannot do it; his title is indefeasible. So they come and go to the tune of “Tin-tara-boom-de-

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