The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Market-Place, by Harold Frederic

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Title: The Market-Place

Author: Harold Frederic

Release Date: July 6, 2008 [EBook #298]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARKET-PLACE ***

Produced by John Hamm

THE MARKET-PLACE

by Harold Frederic

CHAPTER I

THE battle was over, and the victor remained on the field--sitting alone
with the hurly-burly of his thoughts.

His triumph was so sweeping and comprehensive as to be somewhat
shapeless to the view. He had a sense of fascinated pain when he tried
to define to himself what its limits would probably be. Vistas of
unchecked, expanding conquest stretched away in every direction. He held
at his mercy everything within sight. Indeed, it rested entirely with
him to say whether there should be any such thing as mercy at all--and
until he chose to utter the restraining word the rout of the vanquished
would go on with multiplying terrors and ruin. He could crush and
torture and despoil his enemies until he was tired. The responsibility
of having to decide when he would stop grinding their faces might come
to weigh upon him later on, but he would not give it room in his mind
to-night.

A picture of these faces of his victims shaped itself out of the flames
in the grate. They were moulded in a family likeness, these phantom
visages: they were all Jewish, all malignant, all distorted with fright.
They implored him with eyes in which panic asserted itself above rage
and cunning. Only here and there did he recall a name with which to
label one of these countenances; very few of them raised a memory of
individual rancour. The faces were those of men he had seen, no doubt,
but their persecution of him had been impersonal; his great revenge was
equally so. As he looked, in truth, there was only one face--a composite
mask of what he had done battle with, and overthrown, and would trample
implacably under foot. He stared with a conqueror's cold frown at it,
and gave an abrupt laugh which started harsh echoes in the stillness of
the Board Room. Then he shook off the reverie, and got to his feet. He
shivered a litt