The famous name of Merdle became, every day, more famous in the land. Nobody knew that the Merdle of such high renown¹ had ever done any good to any one, alive or dead, or to any earthly thing; nobody knew that he had any capacity or utterance² of any sort in him, which had ever thrown, for any creature, the feeblest farthing-candle ray of light on any path of duty or diversion, pain or pleasure, toil³ or rest, fact or fancy, among the multiplicity of paths in the labyrinth⁴ trodden by the sons of Adam; nobody had the smallest reason for supposing the clay of which this object of worship was made, to be other than the commonest clay, with as clogged⁵ a wick smouldering inside of it as ever kept an image of humanity from tumbling to pieces. All people knew (or thought they knew) that he had made himself immensely rich; and, for that reason alone, prostrated⁶ themselves before him, more degradedly and less excusably than the darkest savage⁷ creeps out of his hole in the ground to propitiate⁸, in some log or reptile⁹, the Deity¹⁰ of his benighted¹¹ soul.