Lord Hovenden turned his eyes from Mr. Falx’s face, on which, while he was speaking, they had been reverently fixed, and smiled at Mr. Cardan with an air of inquiring triumph that seemed to ask whether he had any answer to make to that. “Perhaps,” repeated Mr. Cardan, rather dubiously. Calamy suggested another reason. “It’s surely due,” he said, “to the change in the position of the great and the prosperous. In the past they regarded themselves and were regarded by others as being what they were by divine right. Consequently, the grossest flattery seemed to them only their due. But now the right to be a prince or a millionaire seems a little less divine than it did. Flattery which once seemed only an expression of proper respect now sounds excessive; and what in the past was felt to be almost sincere is now regarded as ironical.” “I think you may be right,” said Mr. Cardan. “One result, at any rate, of this slump in flattery has been a great alteration in the technique of the parasite.” “Has the technique of the parasite ever altered?” asked Mr. Falx. Lord Hovenden passed on his question to Mr. Cardan in an interrogating smile. “Hasn’t he always been the same—living on the labours of society without contributing to the common stock?” “We are speaking of different sorts of parasites,” Mr. Cardan explained, twinkling genially at the minor prophet. “Your parasites are the idle rich; mine are the idle poor who live on the idle rich. Big fleas have little fleas; I was referring to the tapeworms of tapeworms. A most interesting class, I assure you; and one that has never really had its due from the natural historians of humanity. True, there’s Lucian’s great work on the art of being a parasite, and a very fine work too; but a little out of date, particularly where flattery is concerned. Better than Lucian is Diderot. But the _Neveu de Rameau_ deals with only a single type of parasite, and that not the most successful or the most worthy of imitation. Mr. Skimpole in _Bleak House_ isn’t bad. But he lacks subtlety; he’s not a perfect model for the budding tapeworm. The fact is that no writer, so far as I’m aware, has really gone into the question of parasites. I feel their remissness,” Mr. Cardan added, twinkling first at Mrs. Aldwinkle, then round the table at her guests, “almost as a personal affront. Professing as I do—or perhaps trying to profess would be a more accurate description—the parasitical mystery, I regard this conspiracy of silence as most insulting.” “How absurd you are,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle. The complacent references to his own moral defects and weaknesses were frequent in Mr. Cardan’s conversation. To disarm criticism by himself forestalling it, to shock and embarrass those susceptible of embarrassment, to air his own freedom from the common prejudices by lightly owning to defects which others would desire to conceal—it was to achieve these ends that Mr. Cardan so cheerfully gave himself away. “Absurd!” Mrs. Aldwinkle repeated.