“And what is his birth,—his family?”
“How do I know? What does it signify? No doubt some parvenu; but rich, so infernally rich!”
G—— drew me up to the stranger, and the introduction was effected. The manners of Mr. Richards were not those of an adventurous traveller. Travellers are in general gifted with high animal spirits; they are talkative, eager, imperious. Mr. Richards was calm and subdued in tone, with manners which were made distant by the loftiness of punctilious courtesy, the manners of a former age. I observed that the English he spoke was not exactly of our day. I should even have said that the accent was slightly foreign. But then Mr. Richards remarked that he had been little in the habit for many years of speaking in his native tongue. The conversation fell upon the changes in the aspect of London since he had last visited our metropolis. G—— then glanced off to the moral changes,—literary, social, political,—the great men who were removed from the stage within the last twenty years; the new great men who were coming on. In all this Mr. Richards evinced no interest. He had evidently read none of our living authors, and seemed scarcely acquainted by name with our younger statesmen. Once, and only once, he laughed; it was when G—— asked him whether he had any thoughts of getting into Parliament. And the laugh was inward, sarcastic, sinister; a sneer raised into a laugh. After a few minutes, G—— left us to talk to some other acquaintances who had just lounged into the room, and I then said, quietly,—
“I have seen a miniature of you, Mr. Richards, in the house you once inhabited, and perhaps built,—if not wholly, at least in part,—in Oxford Street. You passed by that house this morning.”
Not till I had finished did I raise my eyes to his, and then his fixed my gaze so steadfastly that I could not withdraw it,—those fascinating serpent-eyes. But involuntarily, and as if the words that translated my thought were dragged from me, I added in a low whisper, “I have been a student in the mysteries of life and nature; of those mysteries I have known the occult professors. I have the right to speak to you thus.” And I uttered a certain password.
“Well, I concede the right. What would you ask?”
“To what extent human will in certain temperaments can extend?”
“To what extent can thought extend? Think, and before you draw breath you are in China!”
“True; but my thought has no power in China!”
“Give it expression, and it may have. You may write down a thought which, sooner or later, may alter the whole condition of China. What is a law but a thought? Therefore thought is infinite. Therefore thought has power; not in proportion to its value,—a bad thought may make a bad law as potent as a good thought can make a good one.”