“Pleasant extinction,” said Graham.  “Yet—.”  He thought for an instant.  “There is that other thing—­the Crowd, the great mass of poor men.  Will that die out?  That will not die out.  And it suffers, its suffering is a force that even you—­”

Ostrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenly than before.

“Don’t trouble about these things,” he said.  “Everything will be settled in a few days now.  The Crowd is a huge foolish beast.  What if it does not die out?  Even if it does not die, it can still be tamed and driven.  I have no sympathy with servile men.  You heard those people shouting and singing two nights ago.  They were taught that song.  If you had taken any man there in cold blood and asked why he shouted, he could not have told you.  They think they are shouting for you, that they are loyal and devoted to you.  Just then they were ready to slaughter the Council.  To-day—­they are already murmuring against those who have overthrown the Council.”

“No, no,” said Graham.  “They shouted because their lives were dreary, without joy or pride, and because in me—­in me—­they hoped.”

“And what was their hope?  What is their hope?  What right have they to hope?  They work ill and they want the reward of those who work well.  The hope of mankind—­what is it?  That some day the Over-man may come, that some day the inferior, the weak and the bestial may be subdued or eliminated.  Subdued if not eliminated.  The world is no place for the bad, the stupid, the enervated.  Their duty—­it’s a fine duty too!—­is to die.  The death of the failure!  That is the path by which the beast rose to manhood, by which man goes on to higher things.”

Ostrog took a pace, seemed to think, and turned on Graham.  “I can imagine how this great world state of ours seems to a Victorian Englishman.  You regret all the old forms of representative government—­their spectres still haunt the world, the voting councils, and parliaments and all that eighteenth century tomfoolery.  You feel moved against our Pleasure Cities.  I might have thought of that,—­had I not been busy.  But you will learn better.  The people are mad with envy—­they would be in sympathy with you.  Even in the streets now, they clamour to destroy the Pleasure Cities.  But the Pleasure Cities are the excretory organs of the State, attractive places that year after year draw together all that is weak and vicious, all that is lascivious and lazy, all the easy roguery of the world, to a graceful destruction.  They go there, they have their time, they die childless, all the pretty silly lascivious women die childless, and mankind is the better.  If the people were sane they would not envy the rich their way of death.  And you would emancipate the silly brainless workers that we have enslaved, and try to make their lives easy and pleasant again.  Just as they have sunk to what they are fit for.”  He smiled a smile that irritated Graham oddly.  “You