h milord were to be
found with a parcel of Orsini bombs in his possession! every ragamuffin
from Naples to St. Petersburg would rejoice; the army of cutthroats
would march with a new swagger."

His companion said nothing; but there was a vexed and impatient look on
his face.

"And our little daughter--is she pretty? Does she coax the young men to
play with daggers?--the innocent little thing! And when you start with
your dynamite to break open a jail, she blows you a kiss?--the charming
little fairy! What is it she has embroidered on the ribbons round her
neck?--'_Mort aux rois_?' '_Sic semper tyrannis_?' No; I saw a much
prettier one somewhere the other day: '_Ne si pasce di fresche ruggiade,
ma di sangue di membra di re_.' Isn't it charming? It sounds quite
idyllic, even in English: '_Not for you the nourishment of freshening
dews, but the blood of the limbs of kings_!' The pretty little
stabber--is she fierce?"

"Brand, you are too bad!" said the other, throwing down his knife and
fork, and getting up from the table. "You believe in neither man, woman,
God, nor devil!"

"Would you mind handing over that claret jug?"

"Why," he said, turning passionately toward him, "it is men like you,
who have neither faith, nor hope, nor regret, who are wandering
aimlessly in a nightmare of apathy and indolence and indifference, who
ought to be the first to welcome the new light breaking in the sky. What
is life worth to you? You have nothing to hope for--nothing to look
forward to--nothing you can kill the aimless with. Why should you desire
to-morrow? To-morrow will bring you nothing different from yesterday;
you will do as you did yesterday and the day before yesterday. It is the
life of a horse or an ox--not the life of a human being, with the
sympathies and needs and aspirations of a man. What is the object of
living at all?"

"I really don't know," said the other, simply.

But this pale hump-backed lad, with the fine nostrils, the sensitive
mouth, the large forehead, and the beautiful eyes, was terribly in
earnest. He forgot about his place at table. He kept walking up and
down, occasionally addressing his friend directly, at other times
glancing out at the dark river and the golden lines of the lamps.
And he was an eloquent speaker, too. Debarred from most forms of
physical exercise, he had been brought up in a world of ideas.
When he went to Oxford, it was with some vague notion of subsequently
entering the Church