Jan of Ruffluck had never had so many things to think about and ponder over as now, that he had become an emperor.

In the first place he had to be very guarded, since greatness had been thrust upon him, so as not to let pride get the upper hand.  He must bear in mind continually that we humans were all made from the same material and had sprung from the same First Parents; that we were all of us weak and sinful and at bottom one person was no better than another.

All his life long he had observed, to his dismay, how people tried to lord it over one another, and of course he had no desire to do likewise.  He found, however, that it was not an easy matter for one who had become exalted to maintain a proper humility.  His greatest concern was that he might perhaps say or do something that would cause his old friends, who were still obliged to pursue their humble callings, to feel themselves slighted and forgotten.  Therefore he deemed it best when attending such functions as dinners and parties—­which duty demanded of him—­never to mention in the hearing of these people the great distinction that had come to him.  He could not blame them for envying him.  Indeed not!  Just the same he felt it was wisest not to make them draw comparisons.

And of course he could not ask men like Boerje and the seine-maker to address him as Emperor.  Such old friends could call him Jan, as they had always done; for they could never bring themselves to do otherwise.

But the one whom he had to consider before all others and be most guarded with was the old wife, who sat at home in the hut.  It would have been a great consolation to him, and a joy as well, if greatness had come to her also.  But it had not.  She was the same as of yore.  Anything else was hardly to be expected.  Glory Goldie must have known it would be quite impossible to make an empress of Katrina.  One could not imagine the old woman pinning a golden coronet on her hair when going to church; she would have stayed at home rather than show her face framed in anything but the usual black silk headshawl.

Katrina had declared out and out she did not want to hear about Glory Goldie being an empress.  On the whole it was perhaps best to humour her in this.

But one can understand it must have been hard for him who spent his mornings at the pier, surrounded by admiring throngs of people, who at every turn addressed him as “Emperor,” to drop his royal air the moment he set foot in his own house.  It cannot be denied that he found it a bit irksome having to fetch wood and water for Katrina and then to be spoken to as if he had gone backward in life instead of forward.

If Katrina had only stopped at that he would not have minded it, but she even complained because he would not go out to work now, as in former days.  When she came with such things he always turned a deaf ear.  As if he did not know that the Empress of Portugallia would soon send him so much money that he need never again put on his working clothes!  He felt it would be an insult to her to give in to Katrina on this point.