“Do you imagine there’s only one of that opinion?” Hyacinth returned. “Only one who, having it, still remains a superior man. That’s a very difficult opinion to reconcile with others it’s important to have.” “Schopenhauer did so, successfully,” said Hyacinth. “How delightful you should know old 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 she 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’ve now a far other sense from any I had before of the reality, the solidity, of what’s being prepared. I was hanging about outside, on the steps of the temple, among the loafers and the gossips, but now I’ve been in the innermost sanctuary. Yes, I’ve seen the holy of holies.” “And it’s very dazzling?” “Ah Princess!” the young man strangely sighed. “Then it _is_ real, it _is_ solid?” she pursued. “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to make up my mind about so long.” “It’s beyond anything I can say. Nothing of it appears above the surface; but there’s an immense underworld peopled with a thousand forms of revolutionary passion and devotion. The manner in which it’s 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’s one half of it; the other half is that everything’s doomed! In silence, in darkness, but under the feet of each one of us, the revolution lives and works. It’s 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’ve had a vision,” she continued. “_Pardieu_, I’ve had a vision! So would you, if you had been there.” “I wish I had!” she declared in a tone charged with such ambiguous implications that Hyacinth, catching them a moment after she had spoken, rejoined with a quick, incongruous laugh— “No, you’d have spoiled everything. He made me see, he made me feel, he made me do, everything he wanted.”