as necessary that many should perish in
the holocausts, so that the social conscience in horror declared
the individual conscience free. It is also necessary that all answer
the question which with each day the fatherland asks them, with its
fettered hands extended! Patriotism can only be a crime in a tyrannical
people, because then it is rapine under a beautiful name, but however
perfect humanity may become, patriotism will always be a virtue among
oppressed peoples, because it will at all times mean love of justice,
of liberty, of personal dignity--nothing of chimerical dreams, of
effeminate idyls! The greatness of a man is not in living before his
time, a thing almost impossible, but in understanding its desires,
in responding to its needs, and in guiding it on its forward way. The
geniuses that are commonly believed to have existed before their time,
only appear so because those who judge them see from a great distance,
or take as representative of the age the line of stragglers!"

Simoun fell silent. Seeing that he could awake no enthusiasm in
that unresponsive mind, he turned to another subject and asked with
a change of tone: "And what are you doing for the memory of your
mother and your brother? Is it enough that you come here every year,
to weep like a woman over a grave?" And he smiled sarcastically.

The shot hit the mark. Basilio changed color and advanced a step.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked angrily.

"Without means, without social position, how may I bring their
murderers to justice? I would merely be another victim, shattered like
a piece of glass hurled against a rock. Ah, you do ill to recall this
to me, since it is wantonly reopening a wound!"

"But what if I should offer you my aid?"

Basilio shook his head and remained pensive. "All the tardy
vindications of justice, all the revenge in the world, will not restore
a single hair of my mother's head, or recall a smile to my brother's
lips. Let them rest in peace--what should I gain now by avenging them?"

"Prevent others from suffering what you have suffered, that in
the future there be no brothers murdered or mothers driven to
madness. Resignation is not always a virtue; it is a crime when it
encourages tyrants: there are no despots where there are no slaves! Man
is in his own nature so wicked that he always abuses complaisance. I
thought as you do, and you know what my fate was. Those who caused
your misfortunes are watching you day a