‘Does she look as grimmish as she does in the photograph?’ said Clotilde.

‘Who? the baroness?’ Alvan laughed.  The baroness was not so easily defended from a girl as from her husband, it appeared.  ’She is the best of comrades, best of friends.  She has her faults; may not relish the writ announcing her final deposition, but be you true to me, and as true as she has unfailingly been to me, she will be to you.  That I can promise.  My poor Lucie!  She is winter, if you will.  It is not the winter of the steppes; you may compare her to winter in a noble country; a fine landscape of winter.  The outlines of her face . . . .  She has a great brain.  How much I owe that woman for instruction!  You meet now and then men who have the woman in them without being womanized; they are the pick of men.  And the choicest women are those who yield not a feather of their womanliness for some amount of manlike strength.  And she is one; man’s brain, woman’s heart.  I thought her unique till I heard of you.  And how do I stand between you two?  She has the only fault you can charge me with; she is before me in time, as I am before you.  Shall I spoil you as she spoilt me?  No, no!  Obedience to a boy is the recognition of the heir-apparent, and I respect the salique law as much as I love my love.  I do not offer obedience to a girl, but succour, support.  You will not rule me, but you will invigorate, and if you are petted, you shall not be spoilt.  Do not expect me to show like that undertakerly tree till my years are one hundred.  Even then it will be dangerous to repose beneath my branches in the belief that I am sapless because I have changed colour.  We Jews have a lusty blood.  We are strong of the earth.  We serve you, but you must minister to us.  Sensual?  We have truly excellent appetites.  And why not?  Heroical too!  Soldiers, poets, musicians; the Gentile’s masters in mental arithmetic—­keenest of weapons:  surpassing him in common sense and capacity for brotherhood.  Ay, and in charity; or what stores of vengeance should we not have nourished!  Already we have the money-bags.  Soon we shall hold the chief offices.  And when the popular election is as unimpeded as the coursing of the blood in a healthy body, the Jew shall be foremost and topmost, for he is pre-eminently by comparison the brain of these latter-day communities.  But that is only my answer to the brutish contempt of the Jew.  I am no champion of a race.  I am for the world, for man!’

Clotilde remarked that he had many friends, all men of eminence, and a large following among the people.

He assented:  ’Yes:  Tresten, Retka, Kehlen, the Nizzian.  Yes, if I were other than for legality:—­if it came to a rising, I could tell off able lieutenants.’

‘Tell me of your interview with Ironsides,’ she said proudly and fondly.