For know, Hubert, that I have left you all that
is mine; the gold and the ships with the movables and chattels to
be your own, but the lands which are the main wealth, for life and
afterwards to be your children's, or if you should die childless, then
to go to certain hospitals where the sick are tended."
Now I would have thanked him, but he waved my words aside and went on:
"You will be a very rich man, Hubert, one of the richest in all London;
yet set not your heart on wealth, and above all do not ape nobility or
strive to climb from the honest class of which you come into the ranks
of those idle and dissolute cut-throats and pick-brains who are called
the great. Lighten their pockets if you will, but do not seek to wear
their silken, scented garments. That is my counsel to you."
He paused a while, picking at the bedclothes as the dying do, and
continued,
"You told me that your mother thought you would be a wanderer, and it
is strange that now my mind should be as hers was in this matter. For
I seem to see you far away amidst war and love and splendour, holding
Wave-Flame aloft as did that Thorgrimmer who begat us.
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