ow in the world can I get the thing done?"

"Letters. Your English friend over there will give you letters to the
English Ambassador; he is Lord Fitzdoggin--cousin of the Duke's. And I
will give you some papers that will be of use. I know lots of people in
Petersburg. Why, it's as plain as a pikestaff. Besides, you know the
proverb, _mitte sapientem et nihil dicas._ That means then when you send
a wise man you must not dictate to him."

"You flatter me. But I would rather have your advice, if that is what
you call 'dictating.' I am not exactly a fool, but then, I am not very
wise either."

"No one is very wise, and we are all fools compared to some people,"
said Mr. Bellingham. "If anybody wanted a figurehead for a new Ship of
Fools, I sometimes think a portrait of myself would be singularly
appropriate. There are times when I should fix upon a friend for the
purpose. Mermaid--half fish--figurehead, half man, half fool. That's a
very good idea."

"Very good--for the friend. Meanwhile, you know, it is I who am going on
the errand. If you do not make it clear to me it will be a fool's
errand."

"It is perfectly clear, my dear sir," insisted Mr. Bellingham. "You go
to St. Petersburg; you get an audience--you can do that by means of the
letters; you lay the matter before the Czar, and request justice. Either
you get it or you do not. That is the beauty of an autocratic country."

"How about a free country?" asked Claudius.

"You don't get it," replied his host grimly. Claudius laughed a cloud of
smoke into the air.

"Why is that?" he asked idly, hoping to launch Mr. Bellingham into
further aphorisms and paradoxes.

"Men are everywhere born free, but they--"

"Oh," said Claudius, "I want to know your own opinion about it."

"I have no opinion; I only have experience," answered the other. "At any
rate in an autocratic country there is a visible, tangible repository of
power to whom you can apply. If the repository is in the humour you will
get whatever you want done, in the way of justice or injustice. Now in a
free country justice is absorbed into the great cosmic forces, and it is
apt to be an expensive incantation that wakes the lost elementary
spirit. In Russia justice shines by contrast with the surrounding
corruption, but there is no mistake about it when you get it. In America
it is taken for granted everywhere, and the consequence is that, like
most things that are taken for granted, it is a myth. Roussea