Aladdin of London, or The Lodestar

"You believe that the Revolutionaries will be victorious?" Alban asked in his quiet way.

"I believe that the power is passing from the hands of all autocratic governments, and that some phase of socialism will eventually be the policy of all civilized nations."

"Then what is the good of going to England, Count, if you believe that it will be the same story there?"

"It is only a step on the road. You will never have a revolution in your country, you have too much common sense. But you will tax your bourgeois until you make him bankrupt, and that will be your way of having all things in common. In America the workingman is too well off and the country is too young to permit this kind of thing yet. Its day will be much later--but it will come all the same, and then the deluge. Let us rejoice that we shall not see these things in our time. It is something to know that our champagne is assured to us."

He lifted a golden glass and drank a vague toast heartily. Others in the Club were frankly intoxicated and many a heated scene marked the progress of unceremonious and impromptu revels. Young officers, who carried their lives in their hands every hour, showed their contempt of life in many bottles. Old men, stern and gray at dawn, were so many babbling imbeciles at midnight. The waiters ran to and fro ceaselessly, their faces dripping with perspiration and their throats hoarse with shouting. The musicians fiddled as though the end of all things was at hand and must not surprise them at a broken bar. In Russia the scene was familiar enough, but to the stranger incomprehensible and revolting. Alban felt as one released from a pit of gluttony when at three in the morning Sergius staggered to his feet and bade a servant call him in a drosky.

"We have much to do to-morrow," he muttered, "much to do--and then, ah, my friend, if we only knew what we meant when we say 'and then.'"