re-establish an
order of things that has hopelessly passed away. Hence it is _your_
sentiments that are revolutionary."

Friedland's face had the angry helplessness of a witness in the hands
of a clever lawyer. "A pretty socialist _you_ are!" he broke out, as
his arm swept with an auctioneer's gesture over the luxurious villa in
the Bellevuestrasse. "Why don't you call in the first sweep from the
street and pour him out your champagne?"

"My dear Friedland! Delighted. Help yourself," said Lassalle
imperturbably.

The Prague dignitary purpled.

"You call your sister's husband a sweep!"

"Forgive me. I should have said 'gas-fitter.'"

"And who are you?" shrieked Friedland; "you gaol-bird!"

"The honor of going to gaol for truth and justice will never be yours,
my dear brother-in-law."

Although he was scarcely taller than the gross-paunched parvenu who
had married his only sister, his slim form seemed to tower over him in
easy elegance. An aristocratic insolence and intelligence radiated
from the handsome face that so many women had found irresistible,
uniting, as it did, three universal types of beauty--the Jewish, the
ancient Greek, and the Germanic. The Orient gave complexion and fire,
the nose was Greek, the shape of the head not unlike Goethe's. The
spirit of the fighter who knows not fear flashed from his sombre blue
eyes. The room itself--Lassalle's cabinet--seemed in its simple
luxuriousness to give point at once to the difference between the two
men and to the parvenu's taunt. It was of moderate size, with a large
work-table thickly littered with papers, and a comfortable
writing-chair, on the back of which Lassalle's white nervous hand
rested carelessly. The walls were a mass of book-cases, gleaming with
calf and morocco, and crammed with the literature of many ages and
races. Precious folios denoted the book-lover, ancient papyri the
antiquarian. It was the library of a seeker after the encyclopaedic
culture of the Germany of his day. The one lighter touch in the room
was a small portrait of a young woman of rare beauty and nobility. But
this sober cabinet gave on a Turkish room--a divan covered with rich
Oriental satins, inlaid whatnots, stools, dainty tables, all laden
with costly narghiles, chibouques, and opium-pipes with enormous amber
tips, Damascus daggers, tiles, and other curios brought back by him
from the East--and behind this room one caught sight of a little
winter-garden full of beauti