"Confound universal enlightenment!" railed Truyn.
Oswald shrugged his shoulders, "I should not shed a tear for it," said he, "in the first ardour of my charitable schemes I took some interest in it, but I soon detected the wretched business, masked by that high-sounding phrase;--it means universal distribution of rancid scraps of learning sure to provoke an indigestion which as surely will develop into an enlargement of the spleen. That kind of knowledge never widens the horizon of the masses--it does nothing, except pick holes in their illusions."
"Widen the horizon--pretty stuff that!" said Truyn, the reactionary. "In my opinion a contracted horizon is the condition of happiness for the masses."
"My dear fellow, if you attempt to advocate such views ...." began Georges, half laughing, half indignant.
"My views, remember," interrupted Truyn, "are the result of years of experience; I have lived here all my life, and know the people better than any freshly imported Herr Capriani, blown hither, Heaven only knows whence. What we want is a contented, well-fed, warmly-clad people, that will play merrily with the children on Saturday evening, go piously to church on Sunday morning, and not discuss too much on Sunday afternoon."
"Yes, of course," assented Georges. "What you want, first and foremost, is a people that won't disturb your peaceful enjoyment of life. There's no denying that."
"I am perfectly open to conviction," asserted Truyn with dignity. "As soon as you prove to me that these disturbers of the public peace promote the happiness of the masses, I will ground arms before them."
"Happiness!--I don't believe that those people care as much as they pretend for the happiness of the masses," said Oswald, looking up from his note-book in which he had begun to scribble rapidly. "Happiness is conservative--they would gain nothing from that. As far as I can see, all they want is to rouse the discontent of the people by constant irritation," and he turned to his note-book again. His scribbling did not seem to run as smoothly as before.
"There you are right," agreed Truyn. "Their aim is to arouse the discontent of the people--the discontent of the masses is the tool of their entire party, and they will go on sharpening it until some fine day they'll cut their fingers off with it, and serve them right."
"Decry the degenerate portion of the species as much as you choose," replied Georges, "you cannot but acknowledge that modern democracy has been of immense service to mankind."