All year long, something’s been troubling me. Every time I see Hillary Clinton’s odd, empty expressions, listen to her scripted patter and mad cackling… it’s something I’ve seen before somewhere. In the 2008 presidential campaign, and during her tenure as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was there, but now the lights have gone out, and she appears more of an empty shell, like there’s just enough of her to fill a pantsuit and no more. Something of a grim echo, but of what? Now I comprehend just exactly what it was.
She said, trying to speak steadily: ‘If you proclaim yourself king, they will come from France to fight you. Then we shall have a double war instead of a single one, and it will be fought in England. The whole fellowship will be blotted out.’
He smiled in pure delight.
‘It seems unforgivable,’ she said, pinching the embroidery.
There was nothing she could do. For a moment it crossed her mind that if she humiliated herself to him, knelt down on her stiff old knees to plead for mercy, he might be soothed. But it was evidently hopeless. He was fixed in a course, like a ball in a groove. Even his conversation was, as it were, a spoken part. It would end according to the script.
‘Mordred,’ she said helplessly, ‘have pity on the country people, if you will have none on Arthur or on me.’
He pushed the pug off his lap and stood up, smiling at her with crazy satisfaction. He stretched himself, looking down on her, but not seeing her at all.