ng
all their wealth to the plunder of those employed by them.

This extreme view is, indeed, corrected more than once by the priest;
but it is nevertheless insinuated in certain passages in which the
writer, by attributing them to the hero, seems to make it his own. It
was not till I had carried my statistical studies farther that I was
able to reduce the charge hurled by Socialists against the modern
employers to what are their true and their relatively small dimensions.

Meanwhile I felt that in _The Old Order Changes_, as a synthesis of my
previous writings, I had made my profession of faith as clearly as I
then could; and not long after its publication I betook myself for a
mental holiday to a country where I hoped to discover that modern
problems were unknown.

CHAPTER XII

CYPRUS, FLORENCE, HUNGARY

A Winter in Cyprus--Florence--Siena--Italian
Castles--Cannes--Some Foreign Royalties--Visit During the
Following Spring to Princess Batthyany in Hungary

By the time of which I am now speaking Richard Mallock was Member for
the Torquay division of Devonshire, and I often still helped him at
political and other meetings in his constituency. Lauriston Hall,
Torquay, which had been for a time my home, was let. I stayed on such
occasions at Cockington, or somewhere else in the neighborhood. One
house at which I often stayed was Sandford Orleigh, near Newton,
belonging to Sir Samuel Baker, the traveler and Egyptian administrator,
with whom I had for years been intimate. In his cabinets, or on his
walls, Sir Samuel had treasures and trophies from half the savage or
out-of-the-way countries of the world. One day in his study he took from
a shelf a few pieces of marble--green, streaked with white, and said to
me: "Those are bits of the precious verd antique. I picked them up among
the mountains of Cyprus, where similar blocks were lying about me
everywhere. Anyone who would bring this marble down to the sea might
make a fortune in no time."

As Sir Samuel talked, the whimsical idea occurred to me of going myself
to inspect the particular spot he mentioned, and seeing whether any
enterprise of such a kind would be practicable. This idea, like
Beckett's idea of his system, was for me at first no more than a
plaything, but the very name of Cyprus had always excited my
imagination, and the thought of the island having thus by chance been
revived in me, I began to feel that a visit to it would be a v