“Men are everywhere born free, but they—­”

“Oh,” said Claudius, “I want to know your own opinion about it.”

“I have no opinion; I only have experience,” answered the other.  “At any rate in an autocratic country there is a visible, tangible repository of power to whom you can apply.  If the repository is in the humour you will get whatever you want done, in the way of justice or injustice.  Now in a free country justice is absorbed into the great cosmic forces, and it is apt to be an expensive incantation that wakes the lost elementary spirit.  In Russia justice shines by contrast with the surrounding corruption, but there is no mistake about it when you get it.  In America it is taken for granted everywhere, and the consequence is that, like most things that are taken for granted, it is a myth.  Rousseau thought that in a republic like ours there would be no more of the ‘chains’ he was so fond of talking about.  He did not anticipate a stagnation of the national moral sense.  An Englishman who has made a study of these things said lately that the Americans had retained the forms of freedom, but that the substance had suffered considerably.”

“Who said that?” asked Claudius.

“Mr. Herbert Spencer.  He said it to a newspaper reporter in New York, and so it was put into the papers.  It is the truest thing he ever said, but no one took any more notice of it than if he had told the reporter it was a very fine day.  They don’t care.  Tell the first man you meet down town that he is a liar; he will tell you he knows it.  He will probably tell you you are another.  We are all alike here.  I’m a liar myself in a small way—­there’s a club of us, two Americans and one Englishman.”

“You are the frankest person I ever met, Mr. Bellingham,” said Claudius, laughing.

“Some day I will write a book,” said Mr. Bellingham, rising and beginning to tramp round the room.  “I will call it—­by the way, we were talking about Petersburg.  You had better be off.”

“I am going, but tell me the name of the book before I go.”

“No, I won’t; you would go and write it yourself, and steal my thunder.”  Uncle Horace’s eyes twinkled, and a corruscation of laugh-wrinkles shot like sheet-lightning over his face.  He disappeared into a neighbouring room, leaving a trail of white smoke in his wake, like a locomotive.  Presently he returned with a Bullinger Guide in his hand.

“You can sail on Wednesday at two o’clock by the Cunarder,” he said.  “You can go to Newport to-day, and come back by the boat on Tuesday night, and be ready to start in the morning.”  Mr. Bellingham prided himself greatly on his faculty for making combinations of times and places.

“How about those letters, Mr. Bellingham?” inquired Claudius, who had no idea of going upon his expedition without proper preparations.