"Pardon me," said Lassalle, "it is they who help us. We are the weaker, they are the stronger. That is the point of the other pamphlet you have there, explaining what is a Constitution."
"Don't try your legal quibbles on me."
"Legal quibbles! Why the very point of my pamphlet is to ignore verbal definitions. A Constitution is what constitutes it, and the working-class being nine-tenths of the population must be nine-tenths of the German Constitution."
"Then it's true what they say, that you wish to lead a Revolution!" exclaimed Friedland, raising his coarse glittering hands in horror.
"Follow a Revolution, you mean," said Lassalle. "Here again I do away with mere words. Real Revolutions make themselves, and we only become conscious of them. The introduction of machinery was a greater Revolution than the French, which, since it did not express ideals that were really present among the masses, was bound to be followed by the old thing over again. Indeed, sometimes, as I showed in Franz von Sickingen (my drama of the sixteenth-century war of the Peasants), a Revolution may even be reactionary, an attempt to re-establish an order of things that has hopelessly passed away. Hence it is your sentiments that are revolutionary."
Friedland's face had the angry helplessness of a witness in the hands of a clever lawyer. "A pretty socialist you are!" he broke out, as his arm swept with an auctioneer's gesture over the luxurious villa in the Bellevuestrasse. "Why don't you call in the first sweep from the street and pour him out your champagne?"
"My dear Friedland! Delighted. Help yourself," said Lassalle imperturbably.
The Prague dignitary purpled.
"You call your sister's husband a sweep!"
"Forgive me. I should have said 'gas-fitter.'"