"
"Are you acquainted with the people of the mainland, then?" enquired
the King.
"Sufficiently to know that they are dissatisfied;" returned Ronsard
quietly,--"And that, deep down among the tangled grass and flowers of
that brilliant pleasure-ground called Society, there is a fierce and
starving lion called the People, waiting for prey!"
His voice sank to a low and impressive tone, and for a moment his
hearers looked astonished and disconcerted. He went on as though he had
not seen the expression of their faces.
"Here in The Islands there was the same discontent when I first came.
Every man was in heart a Socialist,--every young boy was a budding
Anarchist. Wild ideas fired their brains. They sought Equality. No man
should be richer than another, they said. Equal lots,--equal lives.
They had their own secret Society, connected with another similar one
across the sea yonder. They were brave, clever and desperate,--moved by
a burning sense of wrong,--wrong which they had not the skill to
explain, but which they felt. It was difficult to persuade or soothe
such men, for they were men of Nature,--not of Shams. But fierce and
obstinate as they were, they were good to me when I was cast up for
dead on their seashore. And I, in turn, have tried to be good to them.
That is, I have tried to make them happy.
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