“Well! I never!” broke in Von Deitz, as he stopped short, waving his long arms in the dusk. “That’s really a bit too much!”
“Yet, have you never thought what a hideous era of bloodshed would have supervened if Christianity had not averted it?” asked Yourii nervously.
“Ha! ha!” replied Sanine, with a disdainful gesture, “at first, under the cloak of Christianity, the arena was drenched with the blood of the martyrs, and then, later, people were massacred and shut up in prisons and mad-houses. And now, every day, more blood is spilt than ever could be shed by a universal revolution. The worst of it all is that each betterment in the life of humanity has always been achieved by bloodshed, anarchy and revolt, though men always affect to make humanitarianism and love of one’s neighbour the basis of their lives and actions. The whole thing results in a stupid tragedy; false, hypocritical, neither flesh nor fowl. For my part, I should prefer an immediate world-catastrophe to a dull, vegetable-existence lasting probably another two thousand years.”
Yourii was silent. Strange to say, his thoughts were not fixed upon the speaker’s words, but upon the speaker’s personality. The latter’s absolute assurance he considered offensive, in fact insupportable.
“Would you, please, tell me,” he began, irresistibly impelled to wound Sanine, “why you always talk as if you were teaching little children?”
Von Deitz, feeling uneasy at this speech, uttered something conciliatory, and rattled his spurs.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Sanine sharply, “why are you so angry?”
Yourii felt that his speech was discourteous, and that he ought not to go any farther, yet his wounded self-respect drove him to add:
“It is my usual tone,” replied Sanine, partly annoyed, and partly anxious to appease the other.
“Well, it is not always a suitable one,” continued Yourii, raising his voice, “I really fail to see what gives you such assurance.”
“Probably the consciousness of being more intelligent than you are,” replied Sanine, now quite calm.
Yourii stood still, trembling from head to foot.
“Don’t get angry!” interposed Sanine. “I had no wish to offend you, and only expressed my candid opinion. It is the same opinion that you have of me, and that Von Deitz has of both of us, and so on. It is only natural.”