‘I shall ask Cohen to come with us,’ said Marshall. ‘He has never seen Mazzini and would like to know him.’ Cohen accordingly called one Sunday evening, and the party went together to a dull, dark, little house in a shabby street of small shops and furnished apartments. When they knocked at Mazzini’s door Marshall asked for Mr — for, even in England, Mazzini had an assumed name which was always used when inquiries were made for him. They were shown upstairs into a rather mean room, and found there a man, really about forty, but looking older. He had dark hair growing away from his forehead, dark moustache, dark beard and a singularly serious face. It was not the face of a conspirator, but that of a saint, although without that just perceptible touch of silliness which spoils the faces of most saints. It was the face of a saint of the Reason, of a man who could be ecstatic for rational ideals, rarest of all endowments. It was the face, too, of one who knew no fear, or, if he knew it, could crush it. He was once concealed by a poor woman whose house was surrounded by Austrian soldiers watching for him. He was determined that she should not be sacrificed, and, having disguised himself a little, walked out into the street in broad daylight, went up to the Austrian sentry, asked for a light for his cigar and escaped. He was cordial in his reception of his visitors, particularly of Clara, Madge and Cohen, whom he had not seen before.
‘The English,’ he said, after some preliminary conversation, ‘are a curious people. As a nation they are what they call practical and have a contempt for ideas, but I have known some Englishmen who have a religious belief in them, a nobler belief than I have found in any other nation. There are English women, also, who have this faith, and one or two are amongst my dearest friends.’
‘I never,’ said Marshall, ‘quite comprehend you on this point. I should say that we know as clearly as most folk what we want, and we mean to have it.’
‘That may be, but it is not Justice, as Justice which inspires you. Those of you who have not enough, desire to have more, that is all.’
‘If we are to succeed, we must preach what the people understand.’
‘Pardon me, that is just where you and I differ. Whenever any real good is done it is by a crusade; that is to say, the cross must be raised and appeal be made to something above the people. No system based on rights will stand. Never will society be permanent till it is founded on duty. If we consider our rights exclusively, we extend them over the rights of our neighbours. If the oppressed classes had the power to obtain their rights to-morrow, and with the rights came no deeper sense of duty, the new order, for the simple reason that the oppressed are no better than their oppressors, would be just as unstable as that which preceded it.’
‘To put it in my own language,’ said Madge, ‘you believe in God.’
Mazzini leaned forward and looked earnestly at her.
‘My dear young friend, without that belief I should have no other.’
‘I should like, though,’ said Marshall, ‘to see the church which would acknowledge you and Miss Madge, or would admit your God to be theirs.’