Horace smiled at the man’s avowal of the want of any principle whatever.
“I was a schoolmaster,” one of the lieutenants of the band, who was stretched at full length smoking and listening to the conversation, remarked. “I know about the old time, but I don’t know anything of this Greece you speak of. Where was it? What did it do? It was just then as it is now. There were a number of little tribes under their own captains. Athens, and Corinth, and Sparta, and Argos, and Thebes, and the rest of them always fighting against each other just as our Albanian clans do; not even ready to put aside their own quarrels to fight against an invader. Pooh! There never was a Greece, and I neither know nor care whether there ever will be. Why should we throw away our lives for a dream?”
“Yes; but at any rate the Greeks have a common language, which shows they are one people.”
“Families fall out more than strangers,” the man replied with a laugh. “You English and the Americans have a common language, and yet you have been fighting against each other, and they refuse to remain one nation with you. These things signify no more than the smoke of my pipe. A Christian’s money, and a Christian’s goods and cattle, are worth just as much to me as a Turk’s; and my captain, who pays me, is more to me than either Mavrocordatos or the Sultan. I daresay that English milord is a worthy man, though he must be a fool, and yet the wine I shall buy out of my share of his money will be just as good as if it had grown in my father’s vineyard.”
Horace laughed. He was not skilled in argument, even had he any inclination to indulge in it at the present time; and he sauntered off and sat down by the doctor, who, not being able to talk with the Greeks, found the time hang heavy on hand. Horace repeated to him his conversation with the two brigands.
“I own I did not know how to answer the last fellow, doctor.”
“There is no answer to be made, Horace. To argue, men must have a common ground to start from. There is no common ground between you and him. His argument is the argument of the materialist everywhere, whether he is Briton, Frenchman, or Greek. To a man who has neither religion nor principles there remains only self-interest, and from that point of view there is no gainsaying the arguments of that Albanian scamp any more than it would have been of use for a lowland merchant carried off by Highland caterans to urge upon them that their conduct was contrary to the laws both of morality and political economy. They would have said that they knew nothing about either, and cared less, and that unless his goodwife or fellow citizens put their hands in their pockets and sent the ransom they demanded, his head would be despatched to them in a hamper with small delay. He certainly had you on the hip with what he said about ancient Greece, for a more quarrelsome, cantankerous, waspish set of little communities the world never saw, unless it were the cities of Italy in the middle ages, which at any rate were of a respectable size, which was, by the way, the only respectable thing about them. Religion and principle and patriotism are the three things that keep men and nations straight, and neither the Greek nor Italian communities had the least glimmering of an idea of either of them, except a love for their own petty states may be called patriotism.”
“A good deal like your Highland clansmen, I should say, doctor,” Horace laughed. “The head of the clan was a much greater man in the eyes of his followers than the King of Scotland.”
“That is so, Horace; and the consequence was, that while there was peace and order and prosperity in the lowlands, the Highlands scarcely made a step forward until the clans were pretty well broken up after Culloden. It was a sore business at the time, but no one can doubt that it did good in the long run. And now, lad, I think that I will just take a sleep. It was not many hours we got of it last night, and you see most of these fellows have set us an example.”
The next morning they started at daybreak. The main body of the band had moved off hours before, leaving the Lieutenant Kornalis, Demetri, and four of the men. Three hours’ walking took them out of the mountains. There was little talking. The Greeks would have preferred going with their leader to plunder another village, for although the booty taken was supposed to be all handed over to the chief for fair distribution, there were few who did not conceal some trinket or money as their own special share of the plunder. They were but a mile or two beyond the hills, when, from a wood skirting the road, four or five shots rang out.