’Why, no; you have done something, and shown your contempt for them.  No one can deny that.  I will some day, if I have an opportunity.  I owe it them; I think I can show them a trick or two still.[A] I have got a Damascus blade in store for their thick hides.  I will turn their flank yet.’

[Footnote A:  I think I know a trick or two would turn Your flanks. Don Juan.]

’And gain a victory where conquest brings no glory.  You are worth brighter laurels, Lord Cadurcis.’

’Now is not it the most wonderful thing in the world that you and I have met?’ said Cadurcis.  ’Now I look upon ourselves as something like, eh!  Fellows with some pith in them.  By Jove, if we only joined together, how we could lay it on!  Crack, crack, crack; I think I see them wincing under the thong, the pompous poltroons!  If you only knew how they behaved to me!  By Jove, sir, they hooted me going to the House of Lords, and nearly pulled me off my horse.  The ruffians would have massacred me if they could; and then they all ran away from a drummer-boy and a couple of grenadiers, who were going the rounds to change guard.  Was not that good?  Fine, eh?  A brutish mob in a fit of morality about to immolate a gentleman, and then scampering off from a sentry.  I call that human nature!’

’As long as they leave us alone, and do not burn us alive, I am content,’ said Herbert.  ‘I am callous to what they say.’

‘So am I,’ said Cadurcis.  ’I made out a list the other day of all the persons and things I have been compared to.  It begins well, with Alcibiades, but it ends with the Swiss giantess or the Polish dwarf, I forget which.  Here is your book.  You see it has been well thumbed.  In fact, to tell the truth, it was my cribbing book, and I always kept it by me when I was writing at Athens, like a gradus, a gradus ad Parnassum, you know.  But although I crib, I am candid, and you see I fairly own it to you.’

‘You are welcome to all I have ever written,’ said Herbert.  ’Mine were but crude dreams.  I wished to see man noble and happy; but if he will persist in being vile and miserable, I must even be content.  I can struggle for him no more.’

‘Well, you opened my mind,’ said Cadurcis.  ’I owe you everything; but I quite agree with you that nothing is worth an effort.  As for philosophy and freedom, and all that, they tell devilish well in a stanza; but men have always been fools and slaves, and fools and slaves they always will be.’

‘Nay,’ said Herbert, ’I will not believe that.  I will not give up a jot of my conviction of a great and glorious future for human destinies; but its consummation will not be so rapid as I once thought, and in the meantime I die.’