“Is that why you call him first-rate? You have very nearly betrayed him to me.” “Do you imagine there is only one of that opinion?” Hyacinth inquired. “Only one who, having it, still remains a superior man. That’s a very difficult opinion to reconcile with others that it is important to have.” “Schopenhauer did so, successfully,” said Hyacinth. “How delightful that you should know Schopenhauer!” the Princess exclaimed. “The gentleman I have in my eye is also German.” Hyacinth let this pass, not challenging her, because he wished not to be challenged in return, and the Princess went on: “Of course such an engagement as you speak of must make a tremendous difference, in everything.” “It has made this difference, that I have now a far other sense from any I had before of the reality, the solidity, of what is being prepared. I was hanging about outside, on the steps of the temple, among the loafers and the gossips, but now I have been in the innermost sanctuary—I have seen the holy of holies.” “And it’s very dazzling?” “Ah, Princess!” sighed the young man. “Then it _is_ real, it _is_ solid?” she pursued. “That’s exactly what I have been trying to make up my mind about, for so long.” “It is more strange than I can say. Nothing of it appears above the surface; but there is an immense underworld, peopled with a thousand forms of revolutionary passion and devotion. The manner in which it is organised is what astonished me; I knew that, or thought I knew it, in a general way, but the reality was a revelation. And on top of it all, society lives! People go and come, and buy and sell, and drink and dance, and make money and make love, and seem to know nothing and suspect nothing and think of nothing; and iniquities flourish, and the misery of half the world is prated about as a ‘necessary evil’, and generations rot away and starve, in the midst of it, and day follows day, and everything is for the best in the best of possible worlds. All that is one-half of it; the other half is that everything is doomed! In silence, in darkness, but under the feet of each one of us, the revolution lives and works. It is a wonderful, immeasurable trap, on the lid of which society performs its antics. When once the machinery is complete, there will be a great rehearsal. That rehearsal is what they want me for. The invisible, impalpable wires are everywhere, passing through everything, attaching themselves to objects in which one would never think of looking for them. What could be more strange and incredible, for instance, than that they should exist just here?” “You make me believe it,” said the Princess, thoughtfully. “It matters little whether one believes it or not!” “You have had a vision,” the Princess continued. “_Parbleu_, I have had a vision! So would you, if you had been there.”