“Wilhelm, I have always had the highest respect for you, your wisdom, your intellect, but forgive me if I say that, in this case, you are talking of things you do not understand.  Everybody who wants work finds it.  I hope you will be at my place next summer.  Then you’ll see how I positively sweat blood in harvest-time trying to get the necessary number of laborers together, and what I have to put up with from the rascals only to keep them in good humor.  Don’t try on any of these windy arguments with a landowner—­people that want work and can’t find it indeed!  Let me tell you, my son, neither I nor any one of my country neighbors can scrape together as many people as we need.”

“But everybody cannot work in the fields.”

“There, at last, you have hit the bull’s eye—­that is where the shoe pinches.  Agriculture offers a certain means of livelihood to all who can and will work properly.  But that does not suit the lazy beggars.  The work is too hard, and, more particularly, the discipline on an estate is too strict for their fancy.  They would rather be in the town, rather starve in a workshop, or ruin their lungs in a factory, because there they have more freedom—­that is, they can go on the spree all night and shirk their work all day, if they like—­they can play the gentleman, and think themselves as good as any general or minister.  Under these circumstances, it is no wonder that they soon come to want, and instead of admitting that it is entirely the fault of their own pigheadedness and perversity, they go and turn unruly against the government.  They should be turned out neck and crop, the whole pack of them.”

“Don’t excite yourself so, Paul,” warned Malvine gently, as her husband grew crimson in the face and ceased to eat.

Wilhelm remained unruffled.  “So you think the Socialist Act was quite justified?”

“Justified!  Why, my only objection to it is that it is much too mild.  A State has a right to use every means it can—­even the sharpest—­to defend itself against its deadly enemies.  To deal mildly with the enemies of society is to be unjust to us, the orderly and industrious members of the community, who work hard to get on, and who don’t want to be for ever trembling for their well-earned possessions, because thieves and vagabonds—­as is the way of all robbers—­would like to enjoy the good things of this life without working for them.”

“My good Paul, that is the language of fanaticism, and, of course, it is useless to try to reason against that.  Only let me tell you this.  I do not believe that the Socialists want to rob anybody; I do not believe that they are enemies to the State and to society.  They too desire a State and a society, but different from the existing ones; they too have an ideal of justice, but it is not the one that has become traditional with us.  Under the new order of things, as they have arranged it in their minds, there should be room for every individual,