"As I look round on this distinguished company, I observe with pleasure that all who compose it have also been endowed with a good proportion of this force, either congenital or inherited, and I can but congratulate them with all my heart. The only essential thing in the world we live in, is to have been born fit for the struggle. We must crush if we would escape being crushed. And, I may add, I also congratulate myself on standing here face to face with so many chosen of the gods on whom Providence has set the seal of happiness."
"Hear him, my dear!" whispered Pepa Frias to Clementina. "This is Mephistopheles' toast, I think."
Clementina smiled faintly. In fact, the doctor's pale, refined face, with the black hair brushed off his forehead, and, above all, his black eyes, in spite of an assumption of innocence, were full of a bitter irony not unworthy of Mephistopheles.
He went on:
"Slavery has existed in every age under one form or another. There have always been men designated by fate to live in the refined atmosphere of intellectual enjoyments, in the cultivation of the arts, in luxury and splendour, and the pleasure to be derived from the society of intelligent and educated persons; while others again are fated to procure them the means of such an existence by rude and painful toil. The pariahs laboured for the Brahmins, the helots for the Spartans, the slaves for the Romans, the villeins for their feudal lords. And is it not the same to this day? Of what avail are laws to abolish slavery? The men who work in the depths of this mine, and inhale the poison which kills them, are slaves, though not by law—by want of bread. The result is the same. It is the law of Nature, and so no doubt a holy and venerable law, that some must suffer for others to enjoy life. You, ladies, are the descendants of the noble Roman ladies who sent their slaves to these mines to procure them vermilion to beautify their faces, and of the Arabs, who used it to decorate the minarets of their palaces at Cordova and Seville. Ladies, I drink to you, my soul possessed by admiration and respect, as the representatives of all that is choicest on earth—Love, Beauty, and Pleasure."
Though the pledge was gallant enough, it seemed uncanny; some muttered disapproval, and the hostile feeling against the young doctor visibly increased. There were one or two who hinted, in an undertone, that this low fellow was making game of them. Rafael Alcantara was eager to pick a quarrel with him, but he read in the doctor's eyes that he would not escape without some serious annoyance, and he preferred to pocket the affront. The ladies regarded him with more benevolence. They thought him "quite a character." The doctor's speech had certainly left an unpleasant impression, which Fuentes failed to dissipate, though he brought out his most original paradoxes.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "I do not propose a toast because I am not an orator. I hope that ere long this will be recognised as an honourable distinction in Spain; that when such an individual goes by in the street it will be said of him with respect: 'he is not an orator;' as we already say: 'he wears no order of merit.'"
The ladies applauded and laughed at the joke. But whether from the doctor's words, or whether they were again oppressed by vague fears, they were all conscious of an uneasy feeling. Every one was cheered when it was announced that the cage was ready to carry them up. Those who remained to the last, heard, as they started, a distant chorus, which came nearer as they rose, till it sounded close by them, and then mysteriously died away below them without their having seen any one. The effect was most whimsical. The words they heard were those of an Andalucian boat song:
| Up the river, and up the river, |
| Water will never run up to the town; |
| Down the river, and down the river, |
| All the world is bound to run down. |
The engineer remarked in explanation: