“No, father”—he called him father—answered the young man in a measured and rather melodious voice. “You see we don’t quite know who is going to pay for that piece. Or at any rate I don’t quite know, as nobody seems to take me into confidence, and if it should chance to be the losing side, well, it might be enough to hang me.”
Dirk flushed up, but made no answer, only Foy remarked:
“That’s right, Adrian, look after your own skin.”
“Just now I find it more interesting,” went on Adrian loftily and disregardful of his brother, “to study those whom the cannon may shoot than to make the cannon which is to shoot them.”
“Hope you won’t be one of them,” interrupted Foy again.
“Where have you been this evening, son?” asked Lysbeth hastily, fearing a quarrel.
“I have been mixing with the people, mother, at the scene on the market-place yonder.”
“Not the martyrdom of our good friend, Jansen, surely?”
“Yes, mother, why not? It is terrible, it is a crime, no doubt, but the observer of life should study these things. There is nothing more fascinating to the philosopher than the play of human passions. The emotions of the brutal crowd, the stolid indifference of the guard, the grief of the sympathisers, the stoical endurance of the victims animated by religious exaltation——”
“And the beautiful logic of the philosopher, with his nose in the air, while he watches his friend and brother in the Faith being slowly burnt to death,” broke out Foy with passion.