e old order is at an end. That is why I have a villa in
the south of France and some excellent apartments in Paris."

"You believe that the Revolutionaries will be victorious?" Alban asked
in his quiet way.

"I believe that the power is passing from the hands of all autocratic
governments, and that some phase of socialism will eventually be the
policy of all civilized nations."

"Then what is the good of going to England, Count, if you believe that
it will be the same story there?"

"It is only a step on the road. You will never have a revolution in your
country, you have too much common sense. But you will tax your bourgeois
until you make him bankrupt, and that will be your way of having all
things in common. In America the workingman is too well off and the
country is too young to permit this kind of thing yet. Its day will be
much later--but it will come all the same, and then the deluge. Let us
rejoice that we shall not see these things in our time. It is something
to know that our champagne is assured to us."

He lifted a golden glass and drank a vague toast heartily. Others in the
Club were frankly intoxicated and many a heated scene marked the
progress of unceremonious and impromptu revels. Young officers, who
carried their lives in their hands every hour, showed their contempt of
life in many bottles. Old men, stern and gray at dawn, were so many
babbling imbeciles at midnight. The waiters ran to and fro ceaselessly,
their faces dripping with perspiration and their throats hoarse with
shouting. The musicians fiddled as though the end of all things was at
hand and must not surprise them at a broken bar. In Russia the scene was
familiar enough, but to the stranger incomprehensible and revolting.
Alban felt as one released from a pit of gluttony when at three in the
morning Sergius staggered to his feet and bade a servant call him in a
drosky.

"We have much to do to-morrow," he muttered, "much to do--and then, ah,
my friend, if we only knew what we meant when we say 'and then.'"

CHAPTER XXV

COUNT ZAMOYSKI SLEEPS

A glimmer of wan daylight in the Count's bedroom troubled him while he
undressed and he drew the curtains with angry fingers. Down there in the
dismal streets the Cossacks watched the night-birds going home to bed
and envied them alike their condition and its consequences. If Sergius
rested a moment at the window, it was to mark the presence of these men
and to take heart at it. And