With no one will an appeal to sanity find more favour than with the insane. "Do let us be reasonable" is the best of all arguments to use to those whose reason is affected. Evidently the man before me was favourably impressed by what I had said. "You are quite right," he replied cordially. "We want the co-operation of no one who is not persuaded in his own mind of the righteousness of our cause. From what I've seen of you, Mr. Rissler, you are just the sort of man with whom I should like to be associated in my work. Your getting out of that opium den with a whole skin when, believing you to be Grant, I'd given the strictest orders that you shouldn't leave the place alive, proves you to be a man ready of resource and quick of brain, just such a man whose co-operation would ensure the final success of the cause. It will be a red-letter day for us if we could induce you to throw in your lot with us. Ask your questions, then, and I'll give you a straight reply." "Well," I said, "tell me in a word what is the end at which you are aiming." "I'm aiming," he said, "to create first in England, and afterwards all over the world, such an upheaval of the social order of things as took place in France at the time of the Great Revolution. But with this difference. The French Revolution was aimed at the aristocrat. You'll think me inconsistent, I fear, when I say that it is not with the aristocrat that I have my chief quarrel. I hold no brief for the aristocracy. Many of them--most of them, perhaps--are lazy, extravagant, self-indulgent, luxury-loving, selfish, and vicious, as I know to my cost. I don't blame them very much for that, any more than I blame the very poor for their want of cleanliness, their thriftlessness, their hand-to-mouth methods of living, and for seeking solace from the cold, the squalor, and the misery of their surroundings, in the warmth and light and companionship of the public-house. Both classes are to some extent the outcome of circumstances. The aristocracy have most of them their sense of _noblesse oblige_, and have the honour of a great name to keep up. On the whole, they do it tolerably well. They distribute largess generously, they entertain lavishly, they pay those who work for them fairly, and they treat those who work for them well. The aristocracy, it is true, has got, first, to give way, and, ultimately, to go, just as the monarchy has got to give way and to go before the advance of democracy.