His theme was Action; the political advantages of Action; and he illustrated his view with historical examples, to the credit of the French, the temporary discredit of the German and English races, who tend to compromise instead.  Of the English he spoke as of a power extinct, a people ‘gone to fat,’ who have gained their end in a hoard of gold and shut the door upon bandit ideas.  Action means life to the soul as to the body.  Compromise is virtual death:  it is the pact between cowardice and comfort under the title of expediency.  So do we gather dead matter about us.  So are we gradually self-stifled, corrupt.  The war with evil in every form must be incessant; we cannot have peace.  Let then our joy be in war:  in uncompromising Action, which need not be the less a sagacious conduct of the war . . . .  Action energizes men’s brains, generates grander capacities, provokes greatness of soul between enemies, and is the guarantee of positive conquest for the benefit of our species.  To doubt that, is to doubt of good being to be had for the seeking.  He drew pictures of the healthy Rome when turbulent, the doomed quiescent.  Rome struggling grasped the world.  Rome stagnant invited Goth and Vandal.  So forth:  alliterative antitheses of the accustomed pamphleteer.  At last her chance arrived.

His opposition sketch of Inaction was refreshed by an analysis of the character of Hamlet.  Then he reverted to Hamlet’s promising youth.  How brilliantly endowed was the Prince of Denmark in the beginning!

‘Mad from the first!’ cried Clotilde.

She produced an effect not unlike that of a sudden crack of thunder.  The three made chorus in a noise of boots on the floor.

Her hero faced about and stood up, looking at her fulgently.  Their eyes engaged without wavering on either side.  Brave eyes they seemed, each pair of them, for his were fastened on a comely girl, and she had strung herself to her gallantest to meet the crisis.

His friends quitted him at a motion of the elbows.  He knelt on the sofa, leaning across it, with clasped hands.

’You are she!—­So, then, is a contradiction of me to be the commencement?’

‘After the apparition of Hamlet’s father the prince was mad,’ said Clotilde hurriedly, and she gazed for her hostess, a paroxysm of alarm succeeding that of her boldness.

‘Why should we two wait to be introduced?’ said he.  ’We know one another.  I am Alvan.  You are she of whom I heard from Kollin:  who else?  Lucretia the gold-haired; the gold-crested serpent, wise as her sire; Aurora breaking the clouds; in short, Clotilde!’

Her heart exulted to hear him speak her name.  She laughed with a radiant face.  His being Alvan, and his knowing her and speaking her name, all was like the happy reading of a riddle.  He came round to her, bowing, and his hand out.  She gave hers:  she could have said, if asked, ’For good!’ And it looked as though she had given it for good.