"Yes, for in their places it made possible capitalism and the French Republic. Should your agitation succeed it would result in the French Revolution over again, together with all its corollaries,—anarchy, kakistocracy, a glorious tyranny on a false foundation, kakistocracy again, and chaos: a counter revolution, again a kakistocracy, and finally impotence, false and evil as the destroyed feudalism."
"You are the worst pessimist I ever saw!"
"Of course, for I am an optimist; and one can't be an optimist touching the future without being a pessimist touching the present."
"But how can you be an optimist with regard to the future when you condemn not only the present but every effort toward rebellion and reform?"
"Because you are trying to turn back a tide that is almost at its full. Have patience, and the ebb will come."
A great Persian greyhound, with white silky hair, paced solemnly down the terrace and dropped its head on its master's knees, gazing at him with soft eyes. Aurelian stroked its nose gently.
"Malcolm," he said, "if you persist you will fail, either broken by the power you attack or through creating a condition more evil, more intolerable still. There is a depth of fall below the point the nineteenth century has now reached, and until that destiny is accomplished, you are helpless."
"You break my heart, Aurelian," said McCann, sadly. "When I went away you promised to fight with me in the battle for reform. I thought you understood me, followed me. And now—you lapse into awful luxury and vice,—opium and things. This is pretty bad, you force me to call you a recreant; here on the very eve of battle you forsake the cause, you go over to the enemy; and worse, you are a traitor, for you debauch my men,—you have North now in there drugged with opium. Last of all, you try to tempt me, you urge me to give up the fight; but I am not a deserter."
"Malcolm, dear boy, I don't deserve quite all of that," said Aurelian, gently. "Yes, I have deserted as you say, for I see more clearly than you; the battle is already lost even before it is fought. I thought once when you filled me with ardour of war that we could win. I see further now. Dear Malcolm, you are waging war against the gods; you have mistaken the light that is on the horizon; you have waked from sleep, but the flush of light that is in your eyes is not the dawn,—it is sunset. You taught me that we lived in another Renaissance; I know it now to be another decadence, inevitable, implacable."
"You are wrong; the decadents have bedevilled you; they are but the froth of the wave that has broken on the shore: the wave of the New Life follows behind to sweep them into nothingness. Leave the simile: grant for the moment that you are right: are you a coward to forsake a good cause that may fail? Have you forgotten John Ball?"