“Plainly, monsieur,” answered St Denys, “by scattering one at least of the world’s heaps of accumulated corruption. Wealth is like a stack of manure, a festering load that is the magnet to any wandering fly of disease. Distribute it and it becomes a blessing that, in fertilising the soil, loses its own noxious properties. But I would go further and ask what advantages have accrued from that system of barter that turns upon a medium of exchange? Has it not cumbered the free earth with these stacks till there has come to be no outlook save through aisles and alleys of abomination?” “That may be true,” said the other, curiously wondering that so much disputation should be launched upon him at this outset of his introduction; “but civilisation, during some thousands of years, has evolved none better.” M. de St Denys shrugged his shoulders. “Civilisation!” he cried. “But you retain no faith in that exposed fetish? Is not civilisation, indeed, one voice of lamentation over its own disenchantment? Can any condition be worse than that of to-day, when the ultimate expression of the social code reveals itself a shameless despotism? Do you ever quite realise--you, monsieur, that through all this compound multiplication of the world’s figures, its destinies remain the monopoly of a little clique of private families? One seems to awaken suddenly to a comical amazement over man’s age-long subscription to so stupendous a paradox. Let us soothe our _amour propre_ by submitting that it was an experiment that has proved itself a failure.” “Nevertheless, monsieur,” said Ned gravely, “I think that in rejecting this civilisation by which you profit--in encouraging rebellion against the established forms that necessity has evolved out of chaos and wisdom included in its codex--you, to say the least of it, are moved to drop the substance for the shadow.” He spoke with some unconscious asperity. He could not bring himself to admit the entire earnestness of one, of whose self-indulgent character he had had such recent proof. This metal, he fancied, was plated. “I cannot believe,” he added, “that so complex a fabric could have triumphed over the ages had it not been founded upon truth.” “But successive architects,” cried St Denys, “may have deviated from the original plan.” “Still, it holds and it rises; and I for one am content to go up with it--to re-order its chambers, perhaps, but never to quarrel with the main design.”