Mr. Elver sat hunched up in his chair, frowning at the table in front of him. Every now and then he took a sip of wine. Tipsily mutable, his mood changed all at once from hilarious to profoundly gloomy. The silence, the darkness funereally tempered by the four unwavering candles, worked on his mind. What a moment since had seemed an uproarious joke now presented itself to his thoughts as appalling. He felt a great need to unburden himself, to transfer responsibilities on to other shoulders, to get advice that should confirm him in his course. Furtively, for a glimpse only, he looked at his guest. How abstractedly and regardlessly he was staring into vacancy! Not a thought, no sympathy for poor Philip Elver. Ah, if he only knew.... He broke silence at last. “Tell me,” he said abruptly, and it seemed to his drunken mind that he was displaying an incredible subtlety in his method of approaching the subject; “do you believe in vivisection?” Mr. Cardan was surprised by the question. “Believe in it?” he echoed. “I don’t quite know how one can _believe_ in vivisection. I think it useful, if that’s what you mean.” “You don’t think it’s wrong?” “No,” said Mr. Cardan. “You think it doesn’t matter cutting up animals?” “Not if the cutting serves some useful human purpose.” “You don’t think animals have got rights?” pursued Mr. Elver with a clarity and tenacity that, in a drunken man, surprised Mr. Cardan. This was a subject, it was clear, on which Mr. Elver must long have meditated. “Just like human beings?” “No,” said Mr. Cardan. “I’m not one of those fools who think that one life is as good as another, simply because it _is_ a life; that a grasshopper is as good as a dog and a dog as good as a man. You must recognise a hierarchy of existences.” “A hierarchy,” exclaimed Mr. Elver, delighted with the word, “a hierarchy—that’s it. That’s exactly it. A hierarchy. And among human beings too?” he added.