I am the King. Ah, but which king? The monarch who had stood on these granite flagstones — scarcely worn then, eighteen hundred years ago — was probably an able and intelligent man; but he failed to conceive that the time could ever come when he would fade into an anonymity as deep as that of his humblest subjects.

Chapter 11 The Silent Princess (p. 65) - The Fountains of Paradise (1979)