to a person of my tastes and
descent meant this--it meant playing a part in the affairs of the
country which gave me my birthright; it meant the carrying forward
of a great enmity which has burned within the family of Sabatini for
the house which now rules my country, for hundreds of years. If I
were a person who sought for excuses, I might say that I have robbed
my relatives for the cause of the patriot. Life to a sawer of wood
means bread. The two states themselves are identical. The man who is
denied bread breaks into riot and gains his ends. I, when I have
been denied what amounts to me as bread, have also helped myself."

"I am not sure," Arnold protested, frankly, "whether you are not
amusing yourself with me."

"Then let me put that doubt to rest, once and for all," Sabatini
replied. "It does not amuse me to trifle with the truth."

"Why do you make me your confidant?" Arnold asked.

"Because it is my intention to make a convert of you," Sabatini said
calmly.

Arnold shook his head.

"I am afraid that that is quite hopeless," he answered. "I have not
the excuse of a country which needs my help, although I have more
than one relative," he added, with a smile, "whom I should not mind
taking by the throat."

"One needs no excuse," Sabatini murmured.

"When one--"

He hesitated.

"I have no scruples," Sabatini interrupted, "in using the word which
seems to trouble you. Perhaps I am a robber. What, however, you do
not appreciate is that nine-tenths of the people in the world are in
the same position."

"I cannot admit that either," Arnold protested.

"It is, then, because you have not considered the matter," Sabatini
declared. "You live in a very small corner of the world and you have
accepted a moral code as ridiculously out of date as Calvinism in
religion. The whole of life is a system of robbery. The strong help
themselves, the weak go down. Did you call your splendid seamen of
Queen Elizabeth's time robbers, because they nailed the English
flag to their mast and swept the seas for plunder? 'We are strong,'
they cried to the country they robbed, 'and you are weak. Stand and
deliver!' I spare you a hundred instances. Take your commercial life
of to-day. The capitalist stretches out his hand and swallows up the
weaker man. He does it ten or fifty times a day and there is no one
to stop him. It is the strong taking from the weak. You cannot walk
from here to Charing Cross without seeing it. Some form