him? It was his duty. He allowed a loyal patriot to be made little of at a public hearing—and by whom? By counsel for the defence, the professional champion of subversive tendencies! There was something rotten in the State!—He began to boil with rage as he looked at Buck. There was the enemy, his antithesis. There was only one thing to do: smash him! There was some insulting quality of humanity in Buck's fat profile! One could feel in him a kind of patronising affection for the phrases which he was weaving to describe Diederich.
"At all times," said Buck, "there have been many thousands such as he, who mistook their business and developed political opinions. What is added, and makes of him a new type, is simply the gesture, the swaggering manner, the aggressiveness of an alleged personality, the craving for effect at any price, even at the expense of others. Those who differ in opinion are to be branded enemies of their country, though they constitute two-thirds of the nation. Class interests, no doubt, but romanticised out of all recognition. Romantic prostration at the feet of a master who just confers enough of his power upon his subjects to enable them to crush lesser men. And as neither master nor slave exists, either in law or in fact, public life takes on an air of wretched mummery, opinion appears in costume parts, speeches fall as from the lips of crusaders, while all the time these people are led by merchants or paper manufacturers. The papier mdchS sword is drawn for an idea like that of majesty, which nobody can any longer experience outside fairy tales. Majesty! …" Buck repeated the word, rolling it on his tongue, and some of its listeners enjoyed the taste of it. The theatre people, who were clearly more interested in the sound than the sense of the words, listened eagerly; and murmured approvingly. For the others Buck's language was too choice, and they were disappointed because he made no use of dialect. Sprezius, however, sat bolt upright in his chair and was eager for prey. "For the last time I must warn counsel not to bring the person of the King into this discus-
