Brill’s Institute. The Institute chose well, unfailingly, but Members who were not Brillists felt uncomfortable under their sway, and, as Gordian and Brillist became synonyms, so Gordian dwindled from the largest Hive to second-smallest. Legend says that Emperor Constantine, converted on his deathbed, willed the Roman Empire to the Christian Church, and in one act both ensured that Church’s immortality and doomed Europe to nineteen centuries of wars for God; just so, Carlyle’s deathbed embrace
