“Quite as well, if it is necessary to be hanged at all,” said Bonito at the door, to which he had mounted softly.
Martha exclaimed angrily, but Saint-Péray did not even stir.
“Pray make yourself at home, fellow-asteroid,” said he. “I must not complain if like attracts like. You can leave us, Martha.”
She obeyed reluctantly. Having followed impulse, she retired on mortification, which is the common way.
“What is your message?” said Louis-Marie, impassively, the moment his visitor was left alone to him. “You can sit or not as you like,” he added. “I am master of nothing.”
Bonito, as apparently phlegmatic for his part, remained standing where he was.
“You may think you know enough of my reputation to insult me,” he said. “It is no concern of mine what you or anyone thinks. The surest sign of worth is to be worth men’s slander, as its surest reward is ingratitude.”
“Pardon me,” said Saint-Péray. “I have never thought of you at all until this moment. But I agree with you so far—that to be vile and unscrupulous is, in this world, to be successful. If you are fortunate, we will admit, by antithesis, that you are virtuous.”
“They call me a Rosicrucian,” said Bonito. “I am at least so far in sympathy with the sect as to believe in the universal regeneration and the cosmopolitanism of the intellect. They call me also an alchemist. Certainly I would transmute the dross of life into gold. It is the world’s way to gild the calf and worship it. We see below the vile enamel. No idols of wealth or patriotism for us; no states or churches as jealous entities. Base metal is under the skin of all. Into the furnace with the vast accumulation, and there anneal it, with the salt of godliness, into that one and universal benevolence which shall be shoreless, landless, eternal—a single harmonious republic of the entire human race!”
He took breath. Saint-Péray sat as apathetic as a deaf mute. The other never thought to attribute his unconcern to his own uninvited self-exposition. Any propagandist, even of disinterestedness, is always absorbed in the first place in himself. In a moment he gave tongue again,—