n open up to work such cure.

GEVRILLIERE

The sovereign remedy for an ill effect
Is the extinction of its evil cause.
Safely and surely how to compass this
I have the weighty honour to disclose,
Certain immunities being guaranteed
By those your power can influence, and yourself.

FOX [astonished]

Assassination?

GEVRILLIERE

I care not for names!
A deed's true name is as its purpose is.
The lexicon of Liberty and Peace
Defines not this deed as assassination;
Though maybe it is writ so in the tongue
Of courts and universal tyranny.

FOX

Why brought you this proposal here to me?

GEVRILLIERE

My knowledge of your love of things humane,
Things free, things fair, of truth, of tolerance,
Right, justice, national felicity,
Prompted belief and hope in such a man!--
The matter is by now well forwarded,
A house at Plassy hired as pivot-point
From which the sanct intention can be worked,
And soon made certain. To our good allies
No risk attaches; merely to ourselves.

FOX [touching a private bell]

Sir, your unconscienced hardihood confounds me.
And your mind's measure of my character
Insults it sorely. By your late-sent lines
Of specious import, by your bland address,
I have been led to prattle hopefully
With a cut-throat confessed!

[The head constable and the secretary enter at the same moment.]

Ere worse befall,
Sir, up and get you gone most dexterously!
Conduct this man: lose never sight of him [to the officer]
Till haled aboard some anchor-weighing craft
Bound to remotest coasts from us and France.

GEVRILLIERE [unmoved]

How you may handle me concerns me little.
The project will as roundly ripe itself
Without as with me. Trusty souls remain,
Though my far bones bleach white on austral shores!--
I thank you for the audience. Long ere this
I might have reft your life! Ay, notice here--

[He produces a dagger; which is snatched from him.]

They need not have done that! Even had you risen
To wrestle with, insult, strike, pinion me,
It would have lain unused. In hands like mine
And my allies', the man of peace is safe,
Treat as he may our corporal tenement
In his misreading of a moral code.

[Exeunt GEVRILLIERE and the constable.]

FOX

Trotter, indeed you well may stare at me!
I look warm, eh?--and I am windless, too;