“Be seated. I wish to talk with you.”
The clear gray eyes of the exiled Rexanian rested searchingly on the pale, clean-cut face of the youth, and he smiled benignly as he drew a chair toward his captive and, seating himself, awaited the latter’s pleasure.
“How long have you lived in this country, Posadowski?” asked the prince, abandoning his smiling visions with an effort and returning to the dreary realities of life.
“Nearly ten years,” answered the revolutionist, whose gray hair proved that he was older than his smooth pink and white complexion would have indicated.
“I wish to ask you a few questions,” continued Prince Carlo. “I feel—in spite of the fact that you deceived me at our first meeting—that in the larger matters pertaining to the questions at issue between us I can trust you implicitly. I give you credit, Posadowski, for being a man of good intentions and honest in your avowed love for Rexania.”
The arch-conspirator bowed gratefully, in acknowledgment of the generous words of the man he had wronged.
“Tell me frankly,” went on the prince, “do you find, Posadowski, that in this land of democracy the people of the lower classes—for I learn that there are class distinctions in America—are in better case than the working-people of Rexania? Compare, for instance, the rich and the poor in Rexopolis and the rich and the poor in New York. Is there not more awful poverty in yonder city than in my capital across the sea? Conversely, is there in Rexania a nobleman who wields over the lives of others an authority as tyrannical as that exercised by the great landlords of New York?”
Posadowski gazed at Prince Carlo in bewilderment. He had come to point out to his royal captive the far-reaching influence his abdication of a crown would have upon the oppressed millions of the human race who still live and struggle and perish beneath the crushing weight of thrones and what those thrones demand; and, lo, this incarnation of obsolete systems and archaic theories had asked him a few pertinent and practical questions that rendered Posadowski’s present mission seemingly absurd. For the arch-conspirator was a clear-headed, honest-hearted man, whose constitutional detestation for shams had long ago made him a rebel against monarchy, and now rendered him dumb as he slowly took in the full significance of the line of inquiry Prince Carlo had put forth.
“You do not answer, Posadowski,” went on Prince Carlo, his voice and manner growing sterner as his words flowed more freely. “Do you know, man, why I came to this country, why I defied my father’s wishes and ran a risk greater even than I imagined at the moment? I wished to see for myself what popular government has really done for a great people in a century of time. They told me on the steamer, these New Yorkers, facts that made even the hard heart of a king bleed for the poor devils who chased the ignis fatuus of freedom into the very stronghold of human tyranny. These are harsh words, Posadowski. Do you dare tell me that they are false—you who know the East Side of that great city in which you, and thousands of deluded Europeans, have toiled in misery that makes the lot of a Rexanian peasant easy, even luxurious, in comparison? Perhaps I have been misinformed. Perhaps I have failed to read aright the newspapers that have come to my hand since I reached this strange, distorted land. But what I have heard, what I have read, forces me to the conviction that no Rexanian in Rexopolis has ever suffered from a form of tyranny so pitiless as that which keeps our countrymen in New York poorer and more hopeless than they were in their native land. If I am wrong, if I am deceived through insufficient data, I am sure you will set me right. Speak, man. Have I told the truth?”