“But why equality?” Hyacinth asked. “Somehow that word doesn’t say so much to me as it used to. Inequality—inequality! I don’t know whether it’s by dint of repeating it over to myself, but _that_ doesn’t shock me as it used.” “They didn’t put you up to that in France, I’m sure!” Paul exclaimed. “Your point of view’s changed. You’ve risen in the world.” “Risen? Good God, what have I risen to?” “True enough; you were always a bloated little swell!” And the so useful man at the great chemical works gave his young friend a sociable slap on the back. There was a momentary bitterness in its being imputed to such a one as Hyacinth, even in joke, that he had taken sides with the lucky beggars as a class, and he had it on his tongue’s end to ask his friend if he had never guessed what his proud titles were—the bastard of a murderess, spawned in a gutter out of which he had been picked by a poor sewing-girl. But his lifelong reserve on this point was a habit not easily broken, and before such a challenge could burn through it Paul had gone on: “If you’ve ceased to believe we can do anything it will be rather awkward, you know.” “I don’t know what I believe, God help me!” Hyacinth remarked in a tone of an effect so lugubrious that his mate indulged in prompt hilarity of attenuation. But our young man added: “I don’t want you to think I’ve ceased to care for the people. What am I but one of the poorest and meanest of them?” “You, my boy? You’re a duke in disguise, and so I thought the first time I ever saw you. That night I took you to our precious ‘exchange of ideas’—I liked the beggar’s name for it—you had a little way with you that made me forget it; I mean that your disguise happened to be better than usual. As regards caring for the people there’s surely no obligation at all,” Muniment continued. “I wouldn’t if I could help it—you can bet your life on that. It all depends on what you see. The way _I_’ve used my eyes in that sink of iniquity off there has led to my seeing that present arrangements won’t do. They won’t do,” he repeated placidly. “Yes, I see that too,” said Hyacinth, with the same dolefulness that had marked his tone a moment before—a dolefulness begotten of the rather helpless sense that, whatever he saw, he saw—and this was always the case—so many other things besides. He saw the immeasurable misery of the people, and yet he saw all that had been, as it were, rescued and redeemed from it: the treasures, the felicities, the splendours, the successes of the world. This quantity took the form sometimes, to his imagination, of a vast, vague, dazzling presence, an irradiation of light from objects undefined, mixed with the atmosphere of Paris and of Venice. He presently added that a hundred things Muniment had told him about the foul horrors of the worst districts of London, pictures of incredible shame and suffering that he had put before him, came back to him now with the memory of the passion they had kindled at the time.