In the mean time, John Toker and Helmer were chatting in the salon. The two men were sitting in the embrasure of one of the windows behind a screen of tall, big-leafed plants, and were unseen and undisturbed.
“This would seem an admirable place for a pair to flirt in,” remarked Toker, as he led his guest to it; “but this privacy will also suit us. I have as yet had no good opportunity to thank you for your address; moreover, this afternoon, I have read the translation of it, and so only now realize how completely our ideas and aims are in agreement. You say quite rightly, mankind has reached the turning of the ways. Either—Or. It truly cannot continue as it is. Therefore, we must put forth all our energies, even if our energies are of no great magnitude. And I have a high opinion of the power of the pen; it can charm in a playful way; but it can also be a very mighty instrument of harm and of help.”
“What you say, Mr. Toker, reminds me of a conversation which I had not long ago with a fellow-countryman, a boyhood friend of mine. He asked me how I could devote my art, my talent to the service of politics and such inartistic objects. I answered, ‘Because there is a fire, my dear friend. And if—in such a case—one holds in one’s hands a brimming pitcher, one uses it to quench the flames and not to water flowers.’”
“Quite right; so let us put out the fire. News which has reached me to-day makes me fear that there is going to be a great disturbance. The work which we are doing here—the exerting of influence on thinking men—proceeds—quite too slowly, I am sorry to say—in spite of all our apparatus for wide publicity.”
“Yes,” agreed Helmer; “it is a dribbling, instead of a flood. Before minds gradually change, the avalanche of collected stupidity comes rolling down and buries the whole region. Here I am speaking in metaphors again.... I keep detecting myself in this habit. Prince Victor Adolph thought that pardonable in a poet. Now, that I think of it: this prince—in spite of his position—is on our side in all his inclinations, and so—precisely because of his position—he might successfully help us in the endeavor to put out the fire.”
“I had the very same idea. You know his reputation?”
“More than that: I know his inclinations.” And Helmer related the interview which he had held that very same day with the prince.
“Well, he seems to be a splendid young man,” said Toker. “To-morrow, at eleven o’clock, he is coming to see me, in order to plan a campaign. The rescue, the saving of the lives of a hundred thousand people—that is to be the object of our conspiracy. He just told me....”
“Just told you? Is he here?”
“Yes, he came at my invitation. At this instant he is on the terrace, as my daughter told me, and is sitting in the moonlight very sentimentally talking with Miss Garlett.”