“A cannibalistic public,” said the Count, quietly.  “Men cannot live, it seems, save by feeding on their neighbour’s life-blood.  They prey on each other’s nerve-tissues and personal sensations.  Everything must be shared.  It gives them a feeling of solidarity, I suppose, in a world where they have lost the courage to stand alone.  Woe to him who dwells apart!  Great things are no longer contemplated with reverence.  They are hauled down from their pedestals in order to be rendered accessible to a generation of pigmies; their dignity is soiled by vulgar contact.  This lust of handling—­what is its ordinary name?  Democracy.  It has abraded the edge of that keen anthropocentric outlook of the Greeks which exalted whatever was distinctively human.  Men have learnt to see beauty here, there, and everywhere—­a little beauty, mark you, not much!  They fail to realize that in widening their capacity of appreciation they dilute its intensity.  They have watered their wine.  There is more to drink.  The draught is poorer.”

It seemed to Denis that the Count’s wine had not been watered.

“Let me show you one or two other things,” said the old man.

They wandered about the premises awhile, looking at marbles, prints, intaglios, coins, till a serving man entered—­a clean-shaven and rather bony old creature whom the Count called Andrea—­to announce tea.  Denis was feeling calmer; he had fallen under the beguiling influence of this place.  He realized that his host was different from the artist type he had hitherto encountered; more profound, more veracious.  Already he formed the project of returning to listen to his melodious voice, and learn some more about that Hellenic life which had hitherto been a sealed book to him.  Nobody every spoke to him after the Count’s fashion.  He contrasted his address with the bantering, half-apologetic, supercilious tone of those other elderly persons who had heretofore deigned to enlightened him.  He was flattered and pleased at being taken seriously and bidden to think in this straightforward, manly fashion; it unstrung his reserve and medicined to his wounded self-respect.

“So your mother would like to see you in Parliament?” asked the Count.  “Politics are apt to be a dirty game.  One cannot touch dirt without soiling one’s hands.  We have a deputy here, the Commendator Morena—­well, one does not like to speak about him.  Let me ask you a question, Mr. Denis.  Why do politicians exist?”

“I suppose the answer would be that is profitable to mankind to be run by somebody.”

“Profitable, at all events, to those who do the running.  Your good Sir Herbert Street has lately sent me a batch of books about the ideal public life of the future.  Socialistic forecasts, and that kind of literature.  He is a world-improver, you know, among other things.  They have amused me more than I thought they would.  That venerable blunder:  to think that in changing the form of