"You always speak well! Your
thoughts are of flame--your speech is of gold; the fire melts the ore!
And then again you have a conscience! That is a strange possession!--
quite useless in these days, like the remains of the tail we had when
we were all happy apes in the primeval forest, pelting the Megatherium
or other such remarkable beasts with cocoanuts! It was a much better
life, Sergius, believe me! A Conscience is merely a mental
Appendicitis! There should be a psychical surgeon with an airy lancet
to cut it out. Not for me!--I was born perfect--without it!"
He laughed again, then with an abrupt change of manner he caught Thord
violently by the arm.
"How can you speak of shame?" he said--"What shame is left in either
man or woman nowadays? Naked to the very skin of foulness, they flaunt
a nudity of vice in every public thoroughfare! Your sentiments, my
grand Sergius, are those of an old world long passed away! You are a
reformer, a lover of truth--a hater of shams--and in the days when the
people loved truth,--and wanted justice,--and fought for both, you
would have been great! But greatness is nowadays judged as 'madness'--
truth as 'want of tact'--desire for justice is 'clamour for notoriety.'
Shame? There is no shame in anything, Sergius, but honesty! That is a
disgrace to the century; for an honest man is always poor, and poverty
is the worst of crimes.
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