The stranger's face flushed up, his eyes seemed to burn, and he leaned over to the desk and took up the dagger.
"See! Give me this! It's exactly what I want. I'll put it in a bouquet of flowers, and pretend to offer them. Only a way to do it, sir! Say the word—may I take it?"
"But the man who assumes such a mission," said David Rossi, "must know himself free from every thought of personal vengeance."
The dagger trembled in the stranger's hand.
"He must be prepared to realise the futility of what he has done—to know that even when he succeeds he only changes the persons, not the things; the actors, not the parts."
The man stood like one who had been stunned, with his mouth partly open, and balancing the dagger on one hand.
"More than that," said David Rossi; "he must be prepared to be told by every true friend of freedom that the man who uses force is not worthy of liberty—that the conflict of intellects alone is human, and to fight otherwise is to be on the level of the brute."
The man threw the dagger back on the desk and laughed.
"I knew you talked like that to the people—statesmen do sometimes—that's all right—it's pretty, and it keeps the people quiet—but we...."
David Rossi rose with a sovereign dignity, but he only said: