"They'd make you king of the anarchists."
I must have repeated his thoughts, for he replied instantly in a half-whisper, "They must;" but perhaps remembering that the admission was a damaging one, he stopped in his walk and addressed me with folded arms and lowered brow.
"I beg of you to spare me such jest, Monsieur Cospatric. This is the one subject I have at heart; it has occupied my life-work; to it I have surrendered fortune, station, everything. Whether or no I look for a recompense cannot interest you."
"Oh, all right," said I; "sorry I spoke. A comprehensive ignorance of all brands of politics must be my excuse."
He stared at me thoughtfully for a minute, and then: "I fear you think me a visionary, monsieur, or even worse, a trifler with men's lives. If you are illiberal, you may deem me no better than a common murderer. Our need is misunderstood, misrepresented. But I will not attempt to defend it with you now—some other time perhaps. Let me tell you of my great hope, and then you will understand how little it has to do with the bloody holocausts we are so unfortunately associated with." And then this strange creature began to unfold a scheme of policy which seemed to me the maddest my ears had ever listened to, and yet with cogent method in its madness. Briefly, he wanted to produce diamonds in huge quantities, and sow them broadcast over the globe. As gems they would then be no longer valuable. Castes would cease to exist. And then governments could be stamped out.
Viewed in the light of after recollection, the whole thing seems absurd, even paltry. But as I heard it then, declaimed with hot, earnest fluency by an enthusiast who had spent long, clever years over his case, it appeared to prove itself up to the hilt. Of course his arguments must have been warped, and his premises utterly false; but so cleverly were they compiled that I could not detect the flaws, and in spite of the outcry of common sense, which shouted "Wrong, wrong, wrong " at the close of each period, I felt myself agreeing implicitly to every clause. And when at length he stopped, exhausted with his own enthusiasm and vehemence, I nodded a tacit agreement, and questioned nothing.
"You must wonder," he went on, after a little pause, "what brings me to use this world-forgotten spot as a workplace; why I come to a town where there are eight women to one man, to an island whose whole energy is not equal to that of the smallest city on the Continent. Have you heard of Raymond Lully? Yes? Then you may remember that he was born at Miramar in Mallorca, and lived much of his life in these Balearic Islands. It was an old journal of his which I found in Rome that first gave me the embryo of my idea. I went round to Barcelona, and crossed to Palma. In the Conde de M——'s library I found in other manuscripts mention of the same thing. Beyond doubt that queer mixture of a man—missionary, fanatic, quack, what you will—had made diamonds as far back as the year 1280. He owned to having stumbled across the Recipe accidentally. Like other alchemists of his time, the transmutation of metals was his aim, and the crystallization of part of his graphite crucible was quite a matter of chance; but it occurred most surely; and he analyzed the why and wherefore, and wrote down the method of working in a place where he says it would last for all time unless he chose to divulge it."
"Great heavens!" said I, jumping up, "then you've got it?"
The anarchist smiled sadly. "I have searched and searched and searched, and have had others on the quest for me. But so far our efforts have been all unsuccessful. I can understand your excitement"—("Thank my several stars you can't," thought I, settling back into my chair)—"You think my great regeneration is already in commencement? You may even have had trivial qualms about your own relatives' trinkets? No, Monsieur Cospatric, the time has unfortunately not yet come."
"You cannot expect me to condole with you."