“What was the name of the great personage who rendered you this service?”
Sophia looked at the handsome Italian mockingly; she clacked her fingers as though they were castanets, and replied—
“If any one asks you, you will say you know nothing about it?”
“Then you have no confidence in me, Sophia?”
“I have confidence in no one, scarcely in myself. Acknowledge that I am frank with you. I might tell you all kinds of tales—that it was the minister of police, or an archduke, or a foreign ambassador, or all three combined, who set me free. Be assured, all the same, that I have contracted obligations towards those who served me, and whom I am serving in my turn.”
“Whatever obligations you are under to them, they have done a very good stroke of business in obtaining such an ally as yourself. Is there another so good in the whole world? You have the genius of corruption, and I do not think there is a conscience anywhere strong enough to resist you. If seductive charm is needed, you will succeed in everything you undertake. Ah, your power is indeed very great and terrible!”
Sophia smiled bitterly, she raised her head, and her countenance assumed a threatening expression.
“All my power consists in my scorn of humanity. I believe men are capable of everything. The sole question is to find the way to make them act. I have seen men, though heroes in the face of death, turn pale and trembling at the idea of being deprived of their pleasures. The most rigid from the point of view of honour, brought into contact with poverty, become accessible to the basest compromises. To turn an honest man into a thief, all that is needed is a woman’s smile. To make the mildest of men shed the blood of another, you need simply arouse his jealousy. These poor wretches who people the earth act, and are unconscious of the influence inspiring them. Men are like puppets, the strings of which are held by firm, audacious hands, whilst they accomplish the most sublime or the most infamous actions at will. And all this, merely through some favourable or perverse influence, a string pulled on one side or the other. And man, irresponsible agent of a destiny he is unable to modify, is treated as a hero or a brigand, carried aloft in triumph or flung into the gutter.”
“But virtue, Sophia, the love of right?”
“Mere accidents, my friend. Do not make them into general rules. The majority of people are virtuous because they have never had the opportunity of being rascals. But have no doubt that they would have been, and very successful ones, with the greatest ease. The human soul, Cesare, is a ground ready prepared for vice and crime. It is simply a question of what seed you intend to sow there. Very well! I am a sower, as you have said. I excel in growing the fruit of corruption. Young Marcel Baradier is now going to be my experiment field.”