“To our modern thinkers and writers,” said the Colonel calmly, “the one great, inexplicable thing is that the people of the beginning of this century--the people of your time--did not plainly foresee just what has happened. As our leading historian, Goldstream, points out, all the history of the past, all the indications of the times, pointed clearly to this culmination. And I agree with Goldstream that it would really seem that it did not require a prophet, or the son of a prophet, to foreshadow what actually happened.” “I am deeply interested,” said the Professor, “yet I do not quite follow your line of reasoning. Will you particularize a little more fully, please?” “With pleasure,” answered the Colonel. “As I have just remarked, Goldstream draws attention to the fact that the history of the past all pointed to the Empire. By this he refers to the history of all the old-time republics. What has that history been? First, a republic, and honest, sturdy simplicity; next, a growth of wealth, followed by a constantly increasing luxury. And what was the outcome of these conditions in all these republics? Class distinction, founded upon a plutocratic basis; and official and industrial corruption born of the wild scramble after wealth and its ostentatious fooleries. These conditions have ever proved the soil from which a ruling class has sprung, followed by a monarchy and an aristocracy. Read the ancient histories, and there you find it recorded again and again.” “That is quite true in many respects,” said the Professor; “but what signs do you discover in our times which foreshadowed the passing of the Republic and the installing of the monarchical institution?” “The very first signs,” answered the Colonel, “are to be traced to the close of the nineteenth century. As can be gleaned from the literature of that period, sons of the rich men were beginning to ape the dress, the manners and the modes of speech of the gilded youth of England. A wave of what was then called Anglomania swept over the country. If a foreign nobleman, even a poverty-stricken German baron, or a beggarly Italian count, came into the country, he was fêted, entertained and run after by your Society and toadied to in a manner of which the smallest London shopkeeper, or the humblest _bourgeois_ of the Paris _faubourgs_ would have been ashamed. If an adventurer of that period called himself my Lord This or Sir Henry That, people straightway lost their heads and their money. I ask you if this has, or has not, been correctly reported?” Kearns laughed. “What memories your words bring to me!” he said. “I could tell you of some extraordinary cases. But don’t let me interrupt.”