“But how do you come to know about me?”

“That is very simple.  You are not, perhaps, aware how well organized we are, and how we follow up everything that may be of use to us afterward.  We know what you did for our party in Berlin, and that you are suffering for it now.  We know your circumstances, and that you have a considerable sum of money at your disposal, and, I repeat, we want educated men.  Most of us have not had the means to get much schooling.  The struggle for our daily bread uses up all our time, and all the brains we have.  Look at me, Herr Doctor, for years I never had more than five hours’ sleep, and always used half the night to learn the little I know.  There are plenty of people among us who—­more’s the pity—­are distrustful of the better educated—­ call them upstarts, and won’t have anything to do with them.  Their idea is that the proletariat should be led by proletariars.  But that is nonsense.  No oppressed class has ever yet been emancipated by its own members.  It was always by high-minded men of wider views out of the upper classes.  Catilina was an aristocrat, and put himself at the head of the populace.  Mirabeau belonged to the Court, and overthrew the monarchy.  Wilberforce, the defender of the negro, was not black himself.”

Wilhelm now for the first time looked more attentively at this stonemason, who talked so glibly of Catalina, Mirabeau and Wilberforce, and the thought passed through his mind that, at any rate, there was one good thing about Social Democracy—­it brought education into circles to which it otherwise would never have penetrated.

“And so,” Hessel wound up, “we workmen too must be led to victory by educated men.”

“You overlook one point, however,” remarked Wilhelm.  “To be your leader, one must before all things share your convictions.”

“It is quite impossible that an educated and thoughtful man should not see the injustice of the present social system.  The government, which oppresses us, sees it as clearly as we do ourselves.  It is not fighting for a conviction, but for the supremacy of a certain class.”

“‘It is impossible,’ is no argument.  In point of fact, I do not hold with your doctrines.  I know that the working-classes suffer, but I do not know why, and I do not believe your theorists when they say it is all because the workingman is ground down by the capitalist.  Furthermore, you speak of leading—­where am I to lead you to?”

“To victory against the plundering feudalism of the State.”

“That is a mere phrase.  I know of no plan which will sweep poverty and distress from the face of the earth.  Even if you raise a revolution and it succeeds, even if you destroy the feudal State and build up a workingman’s State upon the ruins, you will thereby only have improved the condition of a select few, not of the whole—­not even of the many.  I would not like to be in the shoes of your present leaders, preachers and prophets, when you have conquered, and your followers demand to see the results of your victory.  How little they will then be able to fulfill of the promises they have made to-day.”