“You shame yourself, Zouche!” he said; “You shame me; you shame us all! Man, did God put a light of Genius in your soul merely to be quenched by the cravings of a bestial body? What associate are you for us? How can you help us in the fulfilment of our ideal dream? By day you mingle with litterateurs, scientists, and philosophers,--report has it that you have even managed to stumble your way into my lady’s boudoir;--but by night you wander like this,--insensate, furious, warped in soul, muddled in brain, and only the heart of you alive,--the poor unsatisfied heart--hungering and crying for what itself makes impossible!”
Zouche broke into a harsh laugh. Turning up his head to the sky, he thrust back his wild hair, and showed his thin eager face and glittering eyes, outlined cameo-like by the paling radiance of the moon.
“Well spoken, my Sergius!” he exclaimed. “You always speak well! Your thoughts are of flame--your speech is of gold; the fire melts the ore! And then again you have a conscience! That is a strange possession!--quite useless in these days, like the remains of the tail we had when we were all happy apes in the primeval forest, pelting the Megatherium or other such remarkable beasts with cocoanuts! It was a much better life, Sergius, believe me! A Conscience is merely a mental Appendicitis! There should be a psychical surgeon with an airy lancet to cut it out. Not for me!--I was born perfect--without it!”
He laughed again, then with an abrupt change of manner he caught Thord violently by the arm.
“How can you speak of shame?” he said--“What shame is left in either man or woman nowadays? Naked to the very skin of foulness, they flaunt a nudity of vice in every public thoroughfare! Your sentiments, my grand Sergius, are those of an old world long passed away! You are a reformer, a lover of truth--a hater of shams--and in the days when the people loved truth,--and wanted justice,--and fought for both, you would have been great! But greatness is nowadays judged as ‘madness’--truth as ‘want of tact’--desire for justice is ‘clamour for notoriety.’ Shame? There is no shame in anything, Sergius, but honesty! That is a disgrace to the century; for an honest man is always poor, and poverty is the worst of crimes.” He threw up his arms with a wild gesture,--“The worst of crimes! Do I not know it!”