The stranger held his lantern high, so that its ray fell on his face, and with that Mr. Mortimer groaned and collapsed upon the lowest step, where mercifully his wife's ample shadow spread an aegis over him.

Wotan was not a happy choice: But even super-Germans are wont at times to nod, And to borrow Wotan's aegis was indubitably odd; For dark decline o'erwhelmed his line: he saw his god-head wane, And his stately palace vanish in a red and ruinous vain.

Had I my way, I would mark out a circle of a hundred miles in diameter, and throw around it the protecting aegis of the constitution.