mself Vicomte X de
la Z if he chose. We talked nothing but bronzes and porcelain. He was
remarkably appreciative. We parted on cordial terms.

Where he was staying I don't know. I imagine he must have been a lonely
man. Anarchists, I suppose, have no families--not, at any rate, as we
understand that social relation. Organization into families may answer
to a need of human nature, but in the last instance it is based on law,
and therefore must be something odious and impossible to an anarchist.
But, indeed, I don't understand anarchists. Does a man of that--of
that--persuasion still remain an anarchist when alone, quite alone and
going to bed, for instance? Does he lay his head on the pillow, pull
his bedclothes over him, and go to sleep with the necessity of the
chambardement general, as the French slang has it, of the general
blow-up, always present to his mind? And if so how can he? I am sure
that if such a faith (or such a fanaticism) once mastered my thoughts
I would never be able to compose myself sufficiently to sleep or eat or
perform any of the routine acts of daily life. I would want no wife, no
children; I could have no friends, it seems to me; and as to collecting
bronzes or china, that, I should say, would be quite out of the
question. But I don't know. All I know is that Mr. X took his meals in a
very good restaurant which I frequented also.

With his head uncovered, the silver top-knot of his brushed-up hair
completed the character of his physiognomy, all bony ridges and sunken
hollows, clothed in a perfect impassiveness of expression. His meagre
brown hands emerging from large white cuffs came and went breaking
bread, pouring wine, and so on, with quiet mechanical precision.
His head and body above the tablecloth had a rigid immobility. This
firebrand, this great agitator, exhibited the least possible amount of
warmth and animation. His voice was rasping, cold, and monotonous in a
low key. He could not be called a talkative personality; but with his
detached calm manner he appeared as ready to keep the conversation going
as to drop it at any moment.

And his conversation was by no means commonplace. To me, I own, there
was some excitement in talking quietly across a dinner-table with a
man whose venomous pen-stabs had sapped the vitality of at least one
monarchy. That much was a matter of public knowledge. But I knew more. I
knew of him--from my friend--as a certainty what the guardians of social
order