“I wish I could photograph them!”

You have seen that kind of people who will never let on that they don’t know the meaning of a new big word. The more ignorant they are, the more pitifully certain they are to pretend you haven’t shot over their heads. The queen was just one of that sort, and was always making the stupidest blunders by reason of it. She hesitated a moment; then her face brightened up with sudden comprehension, and she said she would do it for me.

I thought to myself: She? why what can she know about photography? But it was a poor time to be thinking. When I looked around, she was moving on the procession with an axe!

Well, she certainly was a curious one, was Morgan le Fay. I have seen a good many kinds of women in my time, but she laid over them all for variety. And how sharply characteristic of her this episode was. She had no more idea than a horse of how to photograph a procession; but being in doubt, it was just like her to try to do it with an axe.

• Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court