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 encyclopædic 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 beautiful plants. "Truth and justice!" repeated Friedland angrily. "Fiddlesticks! A crazy desire for notoriety. That's the truth. And as for justice--well, that was what was meted out to you." "Prussian justice!" Lassalle's hand rose dramatically heavenwards. His brow grew black and his voice had the vibration of the great orator or the great actor. "When I think of this daily judicial murder of ten long years that I passed through, then waves of blood seem to tremble before my eyes, and it seems as if a sea of blood would choke me. Galley-slaves appear to me very honorable persons compared with our judges. As for our so-called Liberal press, it is a harlot masquerading as the goddess of liberty." "And what are you masquerading as?" retorted Friedland. "If you were really in earnest, you would share all your fine things with dirty working-men, and become one of them, instead of going down to their meetings in patent-leather boots."