rica," said Hahlstroem, "is known to have been settled by rogues. Were
you to spread a tent over America, you would have the most beautiful,
the most comfortable penitentiary in the world. The natural form that
survives and triumphs in America is the great rascal, the great
Renaissance idiot. In fact, it is the one form that will triumph
throughout the world. You'll see some day how the great American rascal
will get the whole of Europe, including England, into his clutches.
Europe is also dabbling a little in Renaissance ideals and Renaissance
beasts. It is busily working away, so to speak, on its own rascalization.
But America is in advance by ten horse lengths. Europe's Cesare Borgias
sit in the cafes with _Glockenroecken a la Biedermaier_ and give voice to
their criminal genius in fairly innocent verses. They all look sickly, as
if a barber had cupped all the blood out of their veins. If Europe wants
to save herself, she has only one hope--to make a law by which it will be
a crime to surrender an adventurer, an embezzler, a fraudulent bankrupt,
the keeper of a disorderly house, a thief, or a murderer to America. On
German, English and French vessels in American ports, such people have
already been placed under the special protection of Europe. Then you will
see how soon Europe will outdistance Uncle Sam."

The physicians burst out laughing.

"When did geniuses ever do anything morally? Even the creator of heaven
and earth did not know how to. He produced an immoral world. Every high
form of human intellectual activity has thrown ethics overboard. What
would a historian be who, instead of making researches, would moralise?
What would a physician be who would stop to moralise? Or a great
statesman, who would toe the chalk-line of your middle-class ten
commandments? As for an artist, when he moralises, he is a fool and a
knave. And please tell me, what sort of a business would the church do
if all of us were moral? There would be no church."

There was a cold gleam of audaciousness in the Swede's eyes. His
utterances produced a strange impression. Even if he had pronounced fewer
wild paradoxes, Frederick von Kammacher would have succumbed to his
spell. He eagerly sought for resemblances between father and daughter,
or, more accurately, he observed them without seeking. They were very
evident to one who, alas, to his own torture, was carrying the daughter's
picture alive in his soul. As long as the Swede spoke, he coul