It was all about him.

There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more.

Well, said Merlin, I know whom thou seekest, for thou seekest Merlin; therefore seek no farther, for I am he.

At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly unobstructed in the utterance were these — "God bless Captain Vere!"

Born for success he seemed, With grace to win, with heart to hold, With shining gifts that took all eyes.

This is my friend Durandarte, flower and mirror of the true lovers and valiant knights of his time. He is held enchanted here, as I myself and many others are, by that French enchanter Merlin, who, they say, was the devil's son; but my belief is, not that he was the devil's son, but that he knew, as the saying is, a point more than the devil.

It was Arthur's welcome alone, I believe, which turned the tide of misery for Merlin.

He was fresh and full of faith that "something would turn up."

He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather.

Hitler was the embodiment of that which the best had foretold, from Wagner to Chamberlain, from Gobineau to Grant. Not only the fulfillment of German national destiny but the answer to the total dilemma of the West, the promise of the future of Aryan Man to be built upon the foundations already laid from the time of the Renaissance, the Crusades and even before, to complete the compassing of the globe and to go on to reach out for the universe.
Only a lunatic or an otherwise fevered brain could have conceived even a tiny glimpse of the Gotterdammerung of Europe, the Second World War, which ended - for all time - that promise that had begun with the very beginnings of the West itself following the collapse of Rome and of Classical Civilization. In that sense, true history came to a halt in 1945.

Everyone from the meanest starving cripple to an ambitious young man could expand to the optimism of an improving future because the man offered an unspoken promise of a future which would be rich.

One thing remaining, infallible, would be Enough.

All that winter's day and far into the night the kings twisted and squirmed, but Merlin held them in his iron grasp and would not let go. He became first a rock, and then a mountain in Arthur's defence. Arthur stood equally unmoved. No power on earth could have prevailed against them . . .

only one thing
made him happy
and now that
it was gone
everything
made him happy