replied: "I thank you very much, Baron."

"On one point we are wholly agreed," said the Baron, "and it seems to me
to be the most important--"

"Quite right," interrupted Jason Philip, "you allude to the fight
against Bismarck. Yes, on this point we are, I hope, of precisely the
same opinion. I will do my part. Hand and heart on it, Baron. I could
look with perfectly cold blood on this knight of obscurantism writhing
on the rack."

Herr von Auffenberg heard this temperamental statement with noticeably
tenuous reassurance. He smiled just a little, and then said: "Wait a
minute, my friend, don't be quite so savage." He reached for his
smelling salts, held them to his nose, and closed his eyes. Then he got
up, folded his hands across his back, and walked up and down the room a
few times.

What he said after this was as familiar to him as the letters of the
alphabet. While Jason Philip gaped at his lips in dumb inspiration, the
Baron himself thought of things that had not the remotest connection
with what he said.

"The very same man who tried to make the new Empire inhabitable, with
the aid of a liberal code of laws, and who brought the long-drawn-out
quarrel between the Emperor and the Pope to a happy conclusion, is now
trying, by word, thought, and deed, gradually to destroy all liberal
traditions and to proclaim the Roman High Priest as the real creator of
peace. All that the German Chancellor could do to give the final blow to
liberalism he has done. The reaction has not hesitated to abandon the
idea of the _Kulturkampf_ and to work instead in the interests of class
hatred and racial prejudice, nurturing them even with deeds of
violence. Faced with the crimes they themselves have committed, they
will see their own children despised and rejected."

"_Depeche-toi, mon bon garcon_," screeched the parrot.

"I am happy at the thought of having snatched a precious booty from the
claws of anarchy, and of having won a new citizen for the State, my dear
Herr Schimmelweis. But for the time being it will be advisable for you
to keep somewhat in the background. They will be inclined to make your
change of political conviction the subject of vociferous attacks, and
that might injure the cause."

VI

What was the old Baron really thinking about while he delivered this
political speech?

There was just one thought in his mind; the same sullen, concealed anger
gnawed incessantly at his