Without opening his mouth the Unknown answered me with a kind of smile full of super-human kindness, forbearance, and urbanity,-- "Why dost thou ask me since thou knowest the answer thyself?" And, as if within me, I hear thy voice sound again, "I wish to raise thee to a higher life, to lift thee out of the mire." "Born as I am out of mire, created for baseness, feeding on decay, how shall I be freed from earthly grossness except by death? Take my life then! Thou wilt not? It must be the infliction of punishment which is to educate me? But let me assure thee that humiliations make me proud; being denied the little enjoyments of life produces desire for them; fasting occasions gluttony, which is not my besetting sin; chastity whets the edge of lust; enforced loneliness produces love of the world and its unwholesome delights; poverty gives birth to greed; and the evil companionship to which I am relegated instils contempt of humanity into me, and produces unawares the suspicion that justice is maladministered. Yes, at certain moments it seems to me as though Providence was not kept sufficiently informed by its satraps to whom it has intrusted the rule over mankind; that its prefects and sub-prefects allow themselves to be guilty of malversations, falsifications, baseless denunciations. Thus it has happened to me, that I have been punished where others have sinned; suits have been brought against me, in which I was not only innocent, but actually the defender of right and the accuser of crime. All the same the punishment has lighted on me while the guilty triumphed. "Allow me a plain question: Have women been admitted to a share in the rule? For the present method of government seems so irritable, so petty, so unjust, yes,--unjust. Is it not the case that every time when I have brought a righteous and lawful case against a woman, she, however unworthy she may have been, has been acquitted, and I have been condemned?