"It is the wildest fancy," replied the old man, "that the human mind ever got hold of. The fact is, that man has hardly ceased to be an animal, that he has just discovered his intelligence, and that the great majority of the race have no more skill of it than an infant of its hands. Anyone with a modicum of foresight can do anything he likes. If a visitor from an older and more luminous planet were to observe how whole nations of men are made to do precisely what a few slightly superior persons wish, he would never cease to laugh. And all the time these nations of men think they are doing what they please. They think they are directing their own destinies. They think they are free."
The Marchesa came a little closer to him. "Have you made your destiny what you wish it to be?" she said.
He raised his arms and spread out his fingers with a curious hovering gesture. Then he answered.
"Yes," he said, "at last."
"Have you made every dream that you have dreamed come true?"
"Every dream," he said, "but one, and it is coming true."
"How do you know that?" she said.
"Because," he said, "I have the instinct of conquest. Don't you remember what I told you when you were a little girl?"
"I remember," replied the Marchesa slowly, "but I was very young and I did not understand."
"I was past fifty then," said the man. He put out his arms with his hovering gesture. "I am eighty now, but I have done it all."