The purple light fell on his jaw like a plowshare, on his bony nose, on his hard gray eyes, bringing them into relief against the lines and furrows of his face.
"I have drawn the resources of a nation under me; I have got it in my hand; it obeys me"; he laughed, "but I respect its illusions; I do not offend its eye. I do not wear gewgaws and tinsel and I have hidden my Versailles in a forest. Nations see no farther than the form of things. A republic is as easy to govern as an empire if one only keeps his gilded chair in the garret."
"And, tell me, have you gotten any pleasure out of life?"
The old man made a contemptuous gesture.
"Pleasure," he said, "is the happiness of little men; big men are after something more than that. They are after the satisfaction that comes from directing events. This is the only happiness; to refuse to recognize any directing power in the universe but oneself; to crush out every other authority; to be the one dominating authority; to make events take the avenue one likes. That is the happiness of the god of the universe, if there is any god of the universe. For my part I recognize no authority higher than myself."
He moved about the deck, his arms out, his fingers extended, his face lifted.
"I am willing for men to go about with their string of playthings and to imagine they are getting pleasure out of life; but for my part, if I could be the master behind the moving of events, I would not be content to sit like a village idiot and watch a spinning top. I am willing for little men, lacking courage, to endure life as they find it, and to say it is the will of God; but as for me I will not be cowed into submission. I will not be held back from laying hold of the lever of the great engine merely because the rumble of the machinery fills other men with terror. The fearful may obey all the vague deities they like, but as for me, I wear no god's collar."
"Then," said the Marchesa, "you do not believe that we have any immortal destiny?"
The old man raised his arms with that sudden swift upward sweep of a vulture, seeking to rise from the ground.
"I am not concerned with vague imaginings," he replied. "I do not know whether man is a spirit or a fungus. I only know that the human will is the one power in the universe, so far as we can find out, that is able to direct the moving of events. Nothing else that exists can make the most trivial thing happen or cease to happen. No imagined god or demon, in all the history of the race has ever influenced the order of events as much as the feeblest human creature in an hour of life. Is it not, then, the height of folly for the human mind, that exists and is potent, to yield the direction of events to gods, that are fabled and powerless?"