prompt:
Chapter: " . . . All idealisation makes life poorer.  To beautify it is to take
away its character of complexity--it is to destroy it.  Leave that to the
moralists, my boy.  History is made by men, but they do not make it in
their heads.  The ideas that are born in their consciousness play an
insignificant part in the march of events.  History is dominated and
determined by the tool and the production--by the force of economic
conditions.  Capitalism has made socialism, and the laws made by the
capitalism for the protection of property are responsible for anarchism.
No one can tell what form the social organisation may take in the future.
Then why indulge in prophetic phantasies?  At best they can only
interpret the mind of the prophet, and can have no objective value.
Leave that pastime to the moralists, my boy."

Michaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle, was speaking in an even voice, a
voice that wheezed as if deadened and oppressed by the layer of fat on
his chest.  He had come out of a highly hygienic prison round like a tub,
with an enormous stomach and distended cheeks of a pale, semi-transparent
complexion, as though for fifteen years the servants of an outraged
society had made a point of stuffing him with fattening foods in a damp
and lightless cellar.  And ever since he had never managed to get his
weight down as much as an ounce.

It was said that for three seasons running a very wealthy old lady had
sent him for a cure to Marienbad--where he was about to share the public
curiosity once with a crowned head--but the police on that occasion
ordered him to leave within twelve hours.  His martyrdom was continued by
forbidding him all access to the healing waters.  But he was resigned
now.

With his elbow presenting no appearance of a joint, but more like a bend
in a dummy's limb, thrown over the back of a chair, he leaned forward
slightly over his short and enormous thighs to spit into the grate.

"Yes!  I had the time to think things out a little," he added without
emphasis.  "Society has given me plenty of time for meditation."

On the other side of the fireplace, in the horse-hair arm-chair where Mrs
Verloc's mother was generally privileged to sit, Karl Yundt giggled
grimly, with a faint black grimace of a toothless mouth.  The terrorist,
as he called himself, was old and bald, with a narrow, snow-white wisp of
a goatee hanging limply from his chin.  An extraordinary expression of
underhand malevolence survived in his extinguished eyes.  When he rose
painfully the thrusting forward of a skinny groping hand deformed by
gouty swellings suggested the effort of a moribund murderer summoning all
his remaining strength for a last stab.  He leaned on a thick stick,
which trembled under his other hand.

"I have always dreamed," he mouthed fiercely, "of a band of men absolute
in their resolve to discard all scruples in the choice of means, strong
enough to give themselves frankly the name of destroyers, and free from
the taint of that resigned pessimism which rots the world.  No pity for
anything on earth, including themselves, and death enlisted for good and
all in the service of humanity--that's what I would have liked to see."

His little bald head quivered, imparting a comical vibration to the wisp
of white goatee.  His enunciation would have been almost totally
unintelligible to a stranger.  His worn-out passion, resembling in its
impotent fierceness the excitement of a senile sensualist, was badly
served by a dried throat and toothless gums which seemed to catch the tip
of his tongue.  Mr Verloc, established in the corner of the sofa at the
other end of the room, emitted two hearty grunts of assent.

The old terrorist turned slowly his head on his skinny neck from side to
side.

"And I could never get as many as three such men together.  So much for
your rotten pessimism," he snarled at Michaelis, who uncrossed his thick
legs, similar to bolsters, and slid his feet abruptly under his chair in
sign of exasperation.

He a pessimist!  Preposterous!  He cried out that the charge was
outrageous.  He was so far from pessimism that he saw already the end of
all private property coming along logically, unavoidably, by the mere
development of its inherent viciousness.  The possessors of property had
not only to face the awakened proletariat, but they had also to fight
amongst themselves.  Yes.  Struggle, warfare, was the condition of
private ownership.  It was fatal.  Ah! he did not depend upon emotional
excitement to keep up his belief, no declamations, no anger, no visions
of blood-red flags waving, or metaphorical lurid suns of vengeance rising
above the horizon of a doomed society.  Not he!  Cold reason, he boasted,
was the basis of his optimism.  Yes, optimism--

His laborious wheezing stopped, then, after a gasp or two, he added:

"Don't you think that, if I had not been the optimist I am, I could not
have found in fifteen years some means to cut my throat?  And, in the
last instance, there were always the walls of my cell to dash my head
against."

The shortness of breath took all fire, all animation out of his voice;
his great, pale cheeks hung like filled pouches, motionless, without a
quiver; but in his blue eyes, narrowed as if peering, there was the same
look of confident shrewdness, a little crazy in its fixity, they must
have had while the indomitable optimist sat thinking at night in his
cell.  Before him, Karl Yundt remained standing, one wing of his faded
greenish havelock thrown back cavalierly over his shoulder.  Seated in
front of the fireplace, Comrade Ossipon, ex-medical student, the
principal writer of the F. P. leaflets, stretched out his robust legs,
keeping the soles of his boots turned up to the glow in the grate.  A
bush of crinkly yellow hair topped his red, freckled face, with a
flattened nose and prominent mouth cast in the rough mould of the negro
type.  His almond-shaped eyes leered languidly over the high cheek-bones.
He wore a grey flannel shirt, the loose ends of a black silk tie hung
down the buttoned breast of his serge coat; and his head resting on the
back of his chair, his throat largely exposed, he raised to his lips a
cigarette in a long wooden tube, puffing jets of smoke straight up at the
ceiling.

Michaelis pursued his idea--_the_ idea of his solitary reclusion--the
thought vouchsafed to his captivity and growing like a faith revealed in
visions.  He talked to himself, indifferent to the sympathy or hostility
of his hearers, indifferent indeed to their presence, from the habit he
had acquired of thinking aloud hopefully in the solitude of the four
whitewashed walls of his cell, in the sepulchral silence of the great
blind pile of bricks near a river, sinister and ugly like a colossal
mortuary for the socially drowned.

He was no good in discussion, not because any amount of argument could
shake his faith, but because the mere fact of hearing another voice
disconcerted him painfully, confusing his thoughts at once--these
thoughts that for so many years, in a mental solitude more barren than a
waterless desert, no living voice had ever combatted, commented, or
approved.

No one interrupted him now, and he made again the confession of his
faith, mastering him irresistible and complete like an act of grace: the
secret of fate discovered in the material side of life; the economic
condition of the world responsible for the past and shaping the future;
the source of all history, of all ideas, guiding the mental development
of mankind and the very impulses of their passion--

A harsh laugh from Comrade Ossipon cut the tirade dead short in a sudden
faltering of the tongue and a bewildered unsteadiness of the apostle's
mildly exalted eyes.  He closed them slowly for a moment, as if to
collect his routed thoughts.  A silence fell; but what with the two
gas-jets over the table and the glowing grate the little parlour behind
Mr Verloc's shop had become frightfully hot.  Mr Verloc, getting off the
sofa with ponderous reluctance, opened the door leading into the kitchen
to get more air, and thus disclosed the innocent Stevie, seated very good
and quiet at a deal table, drawing circles, circles, circles; innumerable
circles, concentric, eccentric; a coruscating whirl of circles that by
their tangled multitude of repeated curves, uniformity of form, and
confusion of intersecting lines suggested a rendering of cosmic chaos,
the symbolism of a mad art attempting the inconceivable.  The artist
never turned his head; and in all his soul's application to the task his
back quivered, his thin neck, sunk into a deep hollow at the base of the
skull, seemed ready to snap.

Mr Verloc, after a grunt of disapproving surprise, returned to the sofa.
Alexander Ossipon got up, tall in his threadbare blue serge suit under
the low ceiling, shook off the stiffness of long immobility, and strolled
away into the kitchen (down two steps) to look over Stevie's shoulder.
He came back, pronouncing oracularly: "Very good.  Very characteristic,
perfectly typical."

"What's very good?" grunted inquiringly Mr Verloc, settled again in the
corner of the sofa.  The other explained his meaning negligently, with a
shade of condescension and a toss of his head towards the kitchen:

"Typical of this form of degeneracy--these drawings, I mean."

"You would call that lad a degenerate, would you?" mumbled Mr Verloc.

Comrade Alexander Ossipon--nicknamed the Doctor, ex-medical student
without a degree; afterwards wandering lecturer to working-men's
associations upon the socialistic aspects of hygiene; author of a popular
quasi-medical study (in the form of a cheap pamphlet seized promptly by
the police) entitled "The Corroding Vices of the Middle Classes"; special
delegate of the more or less mysterious Red Committee, together with Karl
Yundt and Michaelis for the work of literary propaganda--turned upon the
obscure familiar of at least two Embassies that glance of insufferable,
hopelessly dense sufficiency which nothing but the frequentation of
science can give to the dulness of common mortals.

"That's what he may be called scientifically.  Very good type too,
altogether, of that sort of degenerate.  It's enough to glance at the
lobes of his ears.  If you read Lombroso--"

Mr Verloc, moody and spread largely on the sofa, continued to look down
the row of his waistcoat buttons; but his cheeks became tinged by a faint
blush.  Of late even the merest derivative of the word science (a term in
itself inoffensive and of indefinite meaning) had the curious power of
evoking a definitely offensive mental vision of Mr Vladimir, in his body
as he lived, with an almost supernatural clearness.  And this phenomenon,
deserving justly to be classed amongst the marvels of science, induced in
Mr Verloc an emotional state of dread and exasperation tending to express
itself in violent swearing.  But he said nothing.  It was Karl Yundt who
was heard, implacable to his last breath.

"Lombroso is an ass."

Comrade Ossipon met the shock of this blasphemy by an awful, vacant
stare.  And the other, his extinguished eyes without gleams blackening
the deep shadows under the great, bony forehead, mumbled, catching the
tip of his tongue between his lips at every second word as though he were
chewing it angrily:

"Did you ever see such an idiot?  For him the criminal is the prisoner.
Simple, is it not?  What about those who shut him up there--forced him in
there?  Exactly.  Forced him in there.  And what is crime?  Does he know
that, this imbecile who has made his way in this world of gorged fools by
looking at the ears and teeth of a lot of poor, luckless devils?  Teeth
and ears mark the criminal?  Do they?  And what about the law that marks
him still better--the pretty branding instrument invented by the overfed
to protect themselves against the hungry?  Red-hot applications on their
vile skins--hey?  Can't you smell and hear from here the thick hide of
the people burn and sizzle?  That's how criminals are made for your
Lombrosos to write their silly stuff about."

The knob of his stick and his legs shook together with passion, whilst
the trunk, draped in the wings of the havelock, preserved his historic
attitude of defiance.  He seemed to sniff the tainted air of social
cruelty, to strain his ear for its atrocious sounds.  There was an
extraordinary force of suggestion in this posturing.  The all but
moribund veteran of dynamite wars had been a great actor in his
time--actor on platforms, in secret assemblies, in private interviews.
The famous terrorist had never in his life raised personally as much as
his little finger against the social edifice.  He was no man of action;
he was not even an orator of torrential eloquence, sweeping the masses
along in the rushing noise and foam of a great enthusiasm.  With a more
subtle intention, he took the part of an insolent and venomous evoker of
sinister impulses which lurk in the blind envy and exasperated vanity of
ignorance, in the suffering and misery of poverty, in all the hopeful and
noble illusions of righteous anger, pity, and revolt.  The shadow of his
evil gift clung to him yet like the smell of a deadly drug in an old vial
of poison, emptied now, useless, ready to be thrown away upon the
rubbish-heap of things that had served their time.

Michaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle, smiled vaguely with his glued
lips; his pasty moon face drooped under the weight of melancholy assent.
He had been a prisoner himself.  His own skin had sizzled under the
red-hot brand, he murmured softly.  But Comrade Ossipon, nicknamed the
Doctor, had got over the shock by that time.

"You don't understand," he began disdainfully, but stopped short,
intimidated by the dead blackness of the cavernous eyes in the face
turned slowly towards him with a blind stare, as if guided only by the
sound.  He gave the discussion up, with a slight shrug of the shoulders.

Stevie, accustomed to move about disregarded, had got up from the kitchen
table, carrying off his drawing to bed with him.  He had reached the
parlour door in time to receive in full the shock of Karl Yundt's
eloquent imagery.  The sheet of paper covered with circles dropped out of
his fingers, and he remained staring at the old terrorist, as if rooted
suddenly to the spot by his morbid horror and dread of physical pain.
Stevie knew very well that hot iron applied to one's skin hurt very much.
His scared eyes blazed with indignation: it would hurt terribly.  His
mouth dropped open.

Michaelis by staring unwinkingly at the fire had regained that sentiment
of isolation necessary for the continuity of his thought.  His optimism
had begun to flow from his lips.  He saw Capitalism doomed in its cradle,
born with the poison of the principle of competition in its system.  The
great capitalists devouring the little capitalists, concentrating the
power and the tools of production in great masses, perfecting industrial
processes, and in the madness of self-aggrandisement only preparing,
organising, enriching, making ready the lawful inheritance of the
suffering proletariat.  Michaelis pronounced the great word
"Patience"--and his clear blue glance, raised to the low ceiling of Mr
Verloc's parlour, had a character of seraphic trustfulness.  In the
doorway Stevie, calmed, seemed sunk in hebetude.

Comrade Ossipon's face twitched with exasperation.

"Then it's no use doing anything--no use whatever."

"I don't say that," protested Michaelis gently.  His vision of truth had
grown so intense that the sound of a strange voice failed to rout it this
time.  He continued to look down at the red coals.  Preparation for the
future was necessary, and he was willing to admit that the great change
would perhaps come in the upheaval of a revolution.  But he argued that
revolutionary propaganda was a delicate work of high conscience.  It was
the education of the masters of the world.  It should be as careful as
the education given to kings.  He would have it advance its tenets
cautiously, even timidly, in our ignorance of the effect that may be
produced by any given economic change upon the happiness, the morals, the
intellect, the history of mankind.  For history is made with tools, not
with ideas; and everything is changed by economic conditions--art,
philosophy, love, virtue--truth itself!

The coals in the grate settled down with a slight crash; and Michaelis,
the hermit of visions in the desert of a penitentiary, got up
impetuously.  Round like a distended balloon, he opened his short, thick
arms, as if in a pathetically hopeless attempt to embrace and hug to his
breast a self-regenerated universe.  He gasped with ardour.

"The future is as certain as the past--slavery, feudalism, individualism,
collectivism.  This is the statement of a law, not an empty prophecy."

The disdainful pout of Comrade Ossipon's thick lips accentuated the negro
type of his face.

"Nonsense," he said calmly enough.  "There is no law and no certainty.
The teaching propaganda be hanged.  What the people knows does not
matter, were its knowledge ever so accurate.  The only thing that matters
to us is the emotional state of the masses.  Without emotion there is no
action."

He paused, then added with modest firmness:

"I am speaking now to you scientifically--scientifically--Eh?  What did
you say, Verloc?"

"Nothing," growled from the sofa Mr Verloc, who, provoked by the
abhorrent sound, had merely muttered a "Damn."

The venomous spluttering of the old terrorist without teeth was heard.

"Do you know how I would call the nature of the present economic
conditions?  I would call it cannibalistic.  That's what it is!  They are
nourishing their greed on the quivering flesh and the warm blood of the
people--nothing else."

Stevie swallowed the terrifying statement with an audible gulp, and at
once, as though it had been swift poison, sank limply in a sitting
posture on the steps of the kitchen door.

Michaelis gave no sign of having heard anything.  His lips seemed glued
together for good; not a quiver passed over his heavy cheeks.  With
troubled eyes he looked for his round, hard hat, and put it on his round
head.  His round and obese body seemed to float low between the chairs
under the sharp elbow of Karl Yundt.  The old terrorist, raising an
uncertain and clawlike hand, gave a swaggering tilt to a black felt
sombrero shading the hollows and ridges of his wasted face.  He got in
motion slowly, striking the floor with his stick at every step.  It was
rather an affair to get him out of the house because, now and then, he
would stop, as if to think, and did not offer to move again till impelled
forward by Michaelis.  The gentle apostle grasped his arm with brotherly
care; and behind them, his hands in his pockets, the robust Ossipon
yawned vaguely.  A blue cap with a patent leather peak set well at the
back of his yellow bush of hair gave him the aspect of a Norwegian sailor
bored with the world after a thundering spree.  Mr Verloc saw his guests
off the premises, attending them bareheaded, his heavy overcoat hanging
open, his eyes on the ground.

He closed the door behind their backs with restrained violence, turned
the key, shot the bolt.  He was not satisfied with his friends.  In the
light of Mr Vladimir's philosophy of bomb throwing they appeared
hopelessly futile.  The part of Mr Verloc in revolutionary politics
having been to observe, he could not all at once, either in his own home
or in larger assemblies, take the initiative of action.  He had to be
cautious.  Moved by the just indignation of a man well over forty,
menaced in what is dearest to him--his repose and his security--he asked
himself scornfully what else could have been expected from such a lot,
this Karl Yundt, this Michaelis--this Ossipon.

Pausing in his intention to turn off the gas burning in the middle of the
shop, Mr Verloc descended into the abyss of moral reflections.  With the
insight of a kindred temperament he pronounced his verdict.  A lazy
lot--this Karl Yundt, nursed by a blear-eyed old woman, a woman he had
years ago enticed away from a friend, and afterwards had tried more than
once to shake off into the gutter.  Jolly lucky for Yundt that she had
persisted in coming up time after time, or else there would have been no
one now to help him out of the 'bus by the Green Park railings, where
that spectre took its constitutional crawl every fine morning.  When that
indomitable snarling old witch died the swaggering spectre would have to
vanish too--there would be an end to fiery Karl Yundt.  And Mr Verloc's
morality was offended also by the optimism of Michaelis, annexed by his
wealthy old lady, who had taken lately to sending him to a cottage she
had in the country.  The ex-prisoner could moon about the shady lanes for
days together in a delicious and humanitarian idleness.  As to Ossipon,
that beggar was sure to want for nothing as long as there were silly
girls with savings-bank books in the world.  And Mr Verloc,
temperamentally identical with his associates, drew fine distinctions in
his mind on the strength of insignificant differences.  He drew them with
a certain complacency, because the instinct of conventional
respectability was strong within him, being only overcome by his dislike
of all kinds of recognised labour--a temperamental defect which he shared
with a large proportion of revolutionary reformers of a given social
state.  For obviously one does not revolt against the advantages and
opportunities of that state, but against the price which must be paid for
the same in the coin of accepted morality, self-restraint, and toil.  The
majority of revolutionists are the enemies of discipline and fatigue
mostly.  There are natures too, to whose sense of justice the price
exacted looms up monstrously enormous, odious, oppressive, worrying,
humiliating, extortionate, intolerable.  Those are the fanatics.  The
remaining portion of social rebels is accounted for by vanity, the mother
of all noble and vile illusions, the companion of poets, reformers,
charlatans, prophets, and incendiaries.

Lost for a whole minute in the abyss of meditation, Mr Verloc did not
reach the depth of these abstract considerations.  Perhaps he was not
able.  In any case he had not the time.  He was pulled up painfully by
the sudden recollection of Mr Vladimir, another of his associates, whom
in virtue of subtle moral affinities he was capable of judging correctly.
He considered him as dangerous.  A shade of envy crept into his thoughts.
Loafing was all very well for these fellows, who knew not Mr Vladimir,
and had women to fall back upon; whereas he had a woman to provide for--

At this point, by a simple association of ideas, Mr Verloc was brought
face to face with the necessity of going to bed some time or other that
evening.  Then why not go now--at once?  He sighed.  The necessity was
not so normally pleasurable as it ought to have been for a man of his age
and temperament.  He dreaded the demon of sleeplessness, which he felt
had marked him for its own.  He raised his arm, and turned off the
flaring gas-jet above his head.

A bright band of light fell through the parlour door into the part of the
shop behind the counter.  It enabled Mr Verloc to ascertain at a glance
the number of silver coins in the till.  These were but few; and for the
first time since he opened his shop he took a commercial survey of its
value.  This survey was unfavourable.  He had gone into trade for no
commercial reasons.  He had been guided in the selection of this peculiar
line of business by an instinctive leaning towards shady transactions,
where money is picked up easily.  Moreover, it did not take him out of
his own sphere--the sphere which is watched by the police.  On the
contrary, it gave him a publicly confessed standing in that sphere, and
as Mr Verloc had unconfessed relations which made him familiar with yet
careless of the police, there was a distinct advantage in such a
situation.  But as a means of livelihood it was by itself insufficient.

He took the cash-box out of the drawer, and turning to leave the shop,
became aware that Stevie was still downstairs.

What on earth is he doing there?  Mr Verloc asked himself.  What's the
meaning of these antics?  He looked dubiously at his brother-in-law, but
he did not ask him for information.  Mr Verloc's intercourse with Stevie
was limited to the casual mutter of a morning, after breakfast, "My
boots," and even that was more a communication at large of a need than a
direct order or request.  Mr Verloc perceived with some surprise that he
did not know really what to say to Stevie.  He stood still in the middle
of the parlour, and looked into the kitchen in silence.  Nor yet did he
know what would happen if he did say anything.  And this appeared very
queer to Mr Verloc in view of the fact, borne upon him suddenly, that he
had to provide for this fellow too.  He had never given a moment's
thought till then to that aspect of Stevie's existence.

Positively he did not know how to speak to the lad.  He watched him
gesticulating and murmuring in the kitchen.  Stevie prowled round the
table like an excited animal in a cage.  A tentative "Hadn't you better
go to bed now?" produced no effect whatever; and Mr Verloc, abandoning
the stony contemplation of his brother-in-law's behaviour, crossed the
parlour wearily, cash-box in hand.  The cause of the general lassitude he
felt while climbing the stairs being purely mental, he became alarmed by
its inexplicable character.  He hoped he was not sickening for anything.
He stopped on the dark landing to examine his sensations.  But a slight
and continuous sound of snoring pervading the obscurity interfered with
their clearness.  The sound came from his mother-in-law's room.  Another
one to provide for, he thought--and on this thought walked into the
bedroom.

Mrs Verloc had fallen asleep with the lamp (no gas was laid upstairs)
turned up full on the table by the side of the bed.  The light thrown
down by the shade fell dazzlingly on the white pillow sunk by the weight
of her head reposing with closed eyes and dark hair done up in several
plaits for the night.  She woke up with the sound of her name in her
ears, and saw her husband standing over her.

"Winnie!  Winnie!"

At first she did not stir, lying very quiet and looking at the cash-box
in Mr Verloc's hand.  But when she understood that her brother was
"capering all over the place downstairs" she swung out in one sudden
movement on to the edge of the bed.  Her bare feet, as if poked through
the bottom of an unadorned, sleeved calico sack buttoned tightly at neck
and wrists, felt over the rug for the slippers while she looked upward
into her husband's face.

"I don't know how to manage him," Mr Verloc explained peevishly.  "Won't
do to leave him downstairs alone with the lights."

She said nothing, glided across the room swiftly, and the door closed
upon her white form.

Mr Verloc deposited the cash-box on the night table, and began the
operation of undressing by flinging his overcoat on to a distant chair.
His coat and waistcoat followed.  He walked about the room in his
stockinged feet, and his burly figure, with the hands worrying nervously
at his throat, passed and repassed across the long strip of looking-glass
in the door of his wife's wardrobe.  Then after slipping his braces off
his shoulders he pulled up violently the venetian blind, and leaned his
forehead against the cold window-pane--a fragile film of glass stretched
between him and the enormity of cold, black, wet, muddy, inhospitable
accumulation of bricks, slates, and stones, things in themselves unlovely
and unfriendly to man.

Mr Verloc felt the latent unfriendliness of all out of doors with a force
approaching to positive bodily anguish.  There is no occupation that
fails a man more completely than that of a secret agent of police.  It's
like your horse suddenly falling dead under you in the midst of an
uninhabited and thirsty plain.  The comparison occurred to Mr Verloc
because he had sat astride various army horses in his time, and had now
the sensation of an incipient fall.  The prospect was as black as the
window-pane against which he was leaning his forehead.  And suddenly the
face of Mr Vladimir, clean-shaved and witty, appeared enhaloed in the
glow of its rosy complexion like a sort of pink seal, impressed on the
fatal darkness.

This luminous and mutilated vision was so ghastly physically that Mr
Verloc started away from the window, letting down the venetian blind with
a great rattle.  Discomposed and speechless with the apprehension of more
such visions, he beheld his wife re-enter the room and get into bed in a
calm business-like manner which made him feel hopelessly lonely in the
world.  Mrs Verloc expressed her surprise at seeing him up yet.

"I don't feel very well," he muttered, passing his hands over his moist
brow.

"Giddiness?"

"Yes.  Not at all well."

Mrs Verloc, with all the placidity of an experienced wife, expressed a
confident opinion as to the cause, and suggested the usual remedies; but
her husband, rooted in the middle of the room, shook his lowered head
sadly.

"You'll catch cold standing there," she observed.

Mr Verloc made an effort, finished undressing, and got into bed.  Down
below in the quiet, narrow street measured footsteps approached the
house, then died away unhurried and firm, as if the passer-by had started
to pace out all eternity, from gas-lamp to gas-lamp in a night without
end; and the drowsy ticking of the old clock on the landing became
distinctly audible in the bedroom.

Mrs Verloc, on her back, and staring at the ceiling, made a remark.

"Takings very small to-day."

Mr Verloc, in the same position, cleared his throat as if for an
important statement, but merely inquired:

"Did you turn off the gas downstairs?"

"Yes; I did," answered Mrs Verloc conscientiously.  "That poor boy is in
a very excited state to-night," she murmured, after a pause which lasted
for three ticks of the clock.

Mr Verloc cared nothing for Stevie's excitement, but he felt horribly
wakeful, and dreaded facing the darkness and silence that would follow
the extinguishing of the lamp.  This dread led him to make the remark
that Stevie had disregarded his suggestion to go to bed.  Mrs Verloc,
falling into the trap, started to demonstrate at length to her husband
that this was not "impudence" of any sort, but simply "excitement."
There was no young man of his age in London more willing and docile than
Stephen, she affirmed; none more affectionate and ready to please, and
even useful, as long as people did not upset his poor head.  Mrs Verloc,
turning towards her recumbent husband, raised herself on her elbow, and
hung over him in her anxiety that he should believe Stevie to be a useful
member of the family.  That ardour of protecting compassion exalted
morbidly in her childhood by the misery of another child tinged her
sallow cheeks with a faint dusky blush, made her big eyes gleam under the
dark lids.  Mrs Verloc then looked younger; she looked as young as Winnie
used to look, and much more animated than the Winnie of the Belgravian
mansion days had ever allowed herself to appear to gentlemen lodgers.  Mr
Verloc's anxieties had prevented him from attaching any sense to what his
wife was saying.  It was as if her voice were talking on the other side
of a very thick wall.  It was her aspect that recalled him to himself.

He appreciated this woman, and the sentiment of this appreciation,
stirred by a display of something resembling emotion, only added another
pang to his mental anguish.  When her voice ceased he moved uneasily, and
said:

"I haven't been feeling well for the last few days."

He might have meant this as an opening to a complete confidence; but Mrs
Verloc laid her head on the pillow again, and staring upward, went on:

"That boy hears too much of what is talked about here.  If I had known
they were coming to-night I would have seen to it that he went to bed at
the same time I did.  He was out of his mind with something he overheard
about eating people's flesh and drinking blood.  What's the good of
talking like that?"

There was a note of indignant scorn in her voice.  Mr Verloc was fully
responsive now.

"Ask Karl Yundt," he growled savagely.

Mrs Verloc, with great decision, pronounced Karl Yundt "a disgusting old
man."  She declared openly her affection for Michaelis.  Of the robust
Ossipon, in whose presence she always felt uneasy behind an attitude of
stony reserve, she said nothing whatever.  And continuing to talk of that
brother, who had been for so many years an object of care and fears:

"He isn't fit to hear what's said here.  He believes it's all true.  He
knows no better.  He gets into his passions over it."

Mr Verloc made no comment.

"He glared at me, as if he didn't know who I was, when I went downstairs.
His heart was going like a hammer.  He can't help being excitable.  I
woke mother up, and asked her to sit with him till he went to sleep.  It
isn't his fault.  He's no trouble when he's left alone."

Mr Verloc made no comment.

"I wish he had never been to school," Mrs Verloc began again brusquely.
"He's always taking away those newspapers from the window to read.  He
gets a red face poring over them.  We don't get rid of a dozen numbers in
a month.  They only take up room in the front window.  And Mr Ossipon
brings every week a pile of these F. P. tracts to sell at a halfpenny
each.  I wouldn't give a halfpenny for the whole lot.  It's silly
reading--that's what it is.  There's no sale for it.  The other day
Stevie got hold of one, and there was a story in it of a German soldier
officer tearing half-off the ear of a recruit, and nothing was done to
him for it.  The brute!  I couldn't do anything with Stevie that
afternoon.  The story was enough, too, to make one's blood boil.  But
what's the use of printing things like that?  We aren't German slaves
here, thank God.  It's not our business--is it?"

Mr Verloc made no reply.

"I had to take the carving knife from the boy," Mrs Verloc continued, a
little sleepily now.  "He was shouting and stamping and sobbing.  He
can't stand the notion of any cruelty.  He would have stuck that officer
like a pig if he had seen him then.  It's true, too!  Some people don't
deserve much mercy."  Mrs Verloc's voice ceased, and the expression of
her motionless eyes became more and more contemplative and veiled during
the long pause.  "Comfortable, dear?" she asked in a faint, far-away
voice.  "Shall I put out the light now?"

The dreary conviction that there was no sleep for him held Mr Verloc mute
and hopelessly inert in his fear of darkness.  He made a great effort.

"Yes.  Put it out," he said at last in a hollow tone.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The chapter opens with a brief speech that someone seems to be giving on the nature of social change. The speaker insists that people's ideas have no bearing on the course of human history, and that the future is always determined by material things, like who's got cash and who doesn't. Basically, the speaker is talking straight Marxism, saying things like "History is dominated and determined by the tool and the production" . There is no point in worrying about changing the way people think, he adds. After all, it's inevitable that capitalism will soon fall and give way to socialism. We find out that the person saying this stuff is named Michaelis, whom you might remember from Mr. Vladimir's little speech to Verloc in chapter two. Michaelis is known as a "ticket-of-leave apostle" because he's been let out of jail before his sentence was finished and because he has a very gentle and stoic way of predicting the future. The narrator is quick to add that Michaelis' voice "wheeze as if deadened and oppressed by the layer of fat on his chest" . Apparently, Michaelis' fifteen years in jail have left him morbidly obese, possibly from eating so many non-nutritious food in his time on the inside. Since he's been let out of prison, Michaelis has met a rich old sugar mama who takes care of him. Next, we learn that Michaelis is speaking inside Mr. Verloc's home. Across from Michaelis, a gross old man named Karl Yundt laughs in a really evil, Disney-villain way. Yundt is really old and has a tough time moving around, and he holds onto a walking stick with a "skinny groping hand deformed by gouty swellings" . In other words, he's not exactly prom-date material. The dude waxes poetic on how he wishes he could find a group of radicals who were actually willing to kill to get what they want. But alas, he's never been able to find any political thinkers who'll actually do anything other than sit around and talk about their beliefs . The narrator goes on to describe the fourth member of the meeting , who is a young ex-medical student and writer of political pamphlets named Comrade Ossipon. Michaelis goes on talking about his ideas, since being alone with his thoughts for so many years has made him completely deaf to the opinions of other people. Verloc decides to get up for some fresh air. He opens the door to his kitchen and finds Stevie on the other side, bent over a table and concentrating very deeply on drawing a bunch of circles. Comrade Ossipon also gets up to have a look at Stevie; then he comes back into the room and notes his approval, calling Stevie "perfectly typical" . Verloc asks what Ossipon means by this, and Ossipon says that Stevie's drawings are very common for his type of "degeneracy" . It turns out that Ossipon believes really strongly in a bunch of ideas that are considered totally bogus nowadays. He believes in the teachings of a man named Cesare Lombroso, who wrote that you could spot a criminal just by looking at the shape of his skull. Even Ossipon's friends don't seem to think much of the supposedly "scientific" basis of a criminals physical characteristics. Karl Yundt, for one, tells it like it is and says, "Lombroso is an ass" . He goes on a huge tirade about how criminals are not born, but made by society, which marks them from a young age with a "branding instrument invented by the overfed to protect themselves against the hungry" . Ossipon tries to argue, but wilts when he looks at Yundt's gross face. By this point, Stevie has gotten up from the kitchen table, planning to take his drawings to bed. But he stands frozen in the doorway of the parlor, horrified at the terrible images that Karl Yundt uses to talk about the horror of social oppression. Again, the narrator shows us that Stevie is extremely sensitive to violence and injustice, since Stevie " very well that hot iron applied to ones skin hurt very much. His scared eyes blaz with indignation" . Eventually, the three anarchists get up and leave. Verloc slides the bolt behind them and curses, realizing that these men are all talk and that they'll never commit the violent act he needs them to. As he goes to bed, Verloc realizes that Stevie is still downstairs. When he goes back down, he finds Stevie walking around and mumbling in the kitchen. At this moment, he realizes that he, Winnie, Stevie, and their mother all rely on his money to survive. He has never had to think about this before because of the money he's made off the old spy game. He goes into his bedroom and wakes up Winnie by calling to her. She doesn't budge at first, but as soon as he mentions Stevie causing a nuisance downstairs, she flies out of bed to go deal with him. When she comes back, Verloc tells her he's not feeling well, and that he hasn't been feeling well for some time. Winnie, though, doesn't really pay attention to him and talks instead about how Stevie gets really upset when he hears men like Karl Yundt talking about how the rich people of the world live by "drinking the blood" of the poor. Stevie doesn't understand that these are metaphors, and his sympathy for human suffering makes him totally freak out when he hears people talk like Yundt. At the end of the chapter, Winnie says that she sometimes agrees with Stevie because she thinks that a lot of people are completely heartless and "don't deserve much mercy" . This shows that even though Winnie cares a lot about Stevie, she's definitely got some violent thoughts in her. All this time, Verloc just gets more depressed about the fact that Winnie really doesn't care about whether he feels good. She's only concerned with defending Stevie's place in the household. You might even feel bad for the guy at this point; but don't worry. It won't last long.


prompt:
Chapter: Most of the thirty or so little tables covered by red cloths with a white
design stood ranged at right angles to the deep brown wainscoting of the
underground hall.  Bronze chandeliers with many globes depended from the
low, slightly vaulted ceiling, and the fresco paintings ran flat and dull
all round the walls without windows, representing scenes of the chase and
of outdoor revelry in mediaeval costumes.  Varlets in green jerkins
brandished hunting knives and raised on high tankards of foaming beer.

"Unless I am very much mistaken, you are the man who would know the
inside of this confounded affair," said the robust Ossipon, leaning over,
his elbows far out on the table and his feet tucked back completely under
his chair.  His eyes stared with wild eagerness.

An upright semi-grand piano near the door, flanked by two palms in pots,
executed suddenly all by itself a valse tune with aggressive virtuosity.
The din it raised was deafening.  When it ceased, as abruptly as it had
started, the be-spectacled, dingy little man who faced Ossipon behind a
heavy glass mug full of beer emitted calmly what had the sound of a
general proposition.

"In principle what one of us may or may not know as to any given fact
can't be a matter for inquiry to the others."

"Certainly not," Comrade Ossipon agreed in a quiet undertone.  "In
principle."

With his big florid face held between his hands he continued to stare
hard, while the dingy little man in spectacles coolly took a drink of
beer and stood the glass mug back on the table.  His flat, large ears
departed widely from the sides of his skull, which looked frail enough
for Ossipon to crush between thumb and forefinger; the dome of the
forehead seemed to rest on the rim of the spectacles; the flat cheeks, of
a greasy, unhealthy complexion, were merely smudged by the miserable
poverty of a thin dark whisker.  The lamentable inferiority of the whole
physique was made ludicrous by the supremely self-confident bearing of
the individual.  His speech was curt, and he had a particularly
impressive manner of keeping silent.

Ossipon spoke again from between his hands in a mutter.

"Have you been out much to-day?"

"No.  I stayed in bed all the morning," answered the other.  "Why?"

"Oh!  Nothing," said Ossipon, gazing earnestly and quivering inwardly
with the desire to find out something, but obviously intimidated by the
little man's overwhelming air of unconcern.  When talking with this
comrade--which happened but rarely--the big Ossipon suffered from a sense
of moral and even physical insignificance.  However, he ventured another
question.  "Did you walk down here?"

"No; omnibus," the little man answered readily enough.  He lived far away
in Islington, in a small house down a shabby street, littered with straw
and dirty paper, where out of school hours a troop of assorted children
ran and squabbled with a shrill, joyless, rowdy clamour.  His single back
room, remarkable for having an extremely large cupboard, he rented
furnished from two elderly spinsters, dressmakers in a humble way with a
clientele of servant girls mostly.  He had a heavy padlock put on the
cupboard, but otherwise he was a model lodger, giving no trouble, and
requiring practically no attendance.  His oddities were that he insisted
on being present when his room was being swept, and that when he went out
he locked his door, and took the key away with him.

Ossipon had a vision of these round black-rimmed spectacles progressing
along the streets on the top of an omnibus, their self-confident glitter
falling here and there on the walls of houses or lowered upon the heads
of the unconscious stream of people on the pavements.  The ghost of a
sickly smile altered the set of Ossipon's thick lips at the thought of
the walls nodding, of people running for life at the sight of those
spectacles.  If they had only known!  What a panic!  He murmured
interrogatively: "Been sitting long here?"

"An hour or more," answered the other negligently, and took a pull at the
dark beer.  All his movements--the way he grasped the mug, the act of
drinking, the way he set the heavy glass down and folded his arms--had a
firmness, an assured precision which made the big and muscular Ossipon,
leaning forward with staring eyes and protruding lips, look the picture
of eager indecision.

"An hour," he said.  "Then it may be you haven't heard yet the news I've
heard just now--in the street.  Have you?"

The little man shook his head negatively the least bit.  But as he gave
no indication of curiosity Ossipon ventured to add that he had heard it
just outside the place.  A newspaper boy had yelled the thing under his
very nose, and not being prepared for anything of that sort, he was very
much startled and upset.  He had to come in there with a dry mouth.  "I
never thought of finding you here," he added, murmuring steadily, with
his elbows planted on the table.

"I come here sometimes," said the other, preserving his provoking
coolness of demeanour.

"It's wonderful that you of all people should have heard nothing of it,"
the big Ossipon continued.  His eyelids snapped nervously upon the
shining eyes.  "You of all people," he repeated tentatively.  This
obvious restraint argued an incredible and inexplicable timidity of the
big fellow before the calm little man, who again lifted the glass mug,
drank, and put it down with brusque and assured movements.  And that was
all.

Ossipon after waiting for something, word or sign, that did not come,
made an effort to assume a sort of indifference.

"Do you," he said, deadening his voice still more, "give your stuff to
anybody who's up to asking you for it?"

"My absolute rule is never to refuse anybody--as long as I have a pinch
by me," answered the little man with decision.

"That's a principle?" commented Ossipon.

"It's a principle."

"And you think it's sound?"

The large round spectacles, which gave a look of staring self-confidence
to the sallow face, confronted Ossipon like sleepless, unwinking orbs
flashing a cold fire.

"Perfectly.  Always.  Under every circumstance.  What could stop me?  Why
should I not?  Why should I think twice about it?"

Ossipon gasped, as it were, discreetly.

"Do you mean to say you would hand it over to a 'teck' if one came to ask
you for your wares?"

The other smiled faintly.

"Let them come and try it on, and you will see," he said.  "They know me,
but I know also every one of them.  They won't come near me--not they."

His thin livid lips snapped together firmly.  Ossipon began to argue.

"But they could send someone--rig a plant on you.  Don't you see?  Get
the stuff from you in that way, and then arrest you with the proof in
their hands."

"Proof of what?  Dealing in explosives without a licence perhaps."  This
was meant for a contemptuous jeer, though the expression of the thin,
sickly face remained unchanged, and the utterance was negligent.  "I
don't think there's one of them anxious to make that arrest.  I don't
think they could get one of them to apply for a warrant.  I mean one of
the best.  Not one."

"Why?" Ossipon asked.

"Because they know very well I take care never to part with the last
handful of my wares.  I've it always by me."  He touched the breast of
his coat lightly.  "In a thick glass flask," he added.

"So I have been told," said Ossipon, with a shade of wonder in his voice.
"But I didn't know if--"

"They know," interrupted the little man crisply, leaning against the
straight chair back, which rose higher than his fragile head.  "I shall
never be arrested.  The game isn't good enough for any policeman of them
all.  To deal with a man like me you require sheer, naked, inglorious
heroism."  Again his lips closed with a self-confident snap.  Ossipon
repressed a movement of impatience.

"Or recklessness--or simply ignorance," he retorted.  "They've only to
get somebody for the job who does not know you carry enough stuff in your
pocket to blow yourself and everything within sixty yards of you to
pieces."

"I never affirmed I could not be eliminated," rejoined the other.  "But
that wouldn't be an arrest.  Moreover, it's not so easy as it looks."

"Bah!" Ossipon contradicted.  "Don't be too sure of that.  What's to
prevent half-a-dozen of them jumping upon you from behind in the street?
With your arms pinned to your sides you could do nothing--could you?"

"Yes; I could.  I am seldom out in the streets after dark," said the
little man impassively, "and never very late.  I walk always with my
right hand closed round the india-rubber ball which I have in my trouser
pocket.  The pressing of this ball actuates a detonator inside the flask
I carry in my pocket.  It's the principle of the pneumatic instantaneous
shutter for a camera lens.  The tube leads up--"

With a swift disclosing gesture he gave Ossipon a glimpse of an
india-rubber tube, resembling a slender brown worm, issuing from the
armhole of his waistcoat and plunging into the inner breast pocket of his
jacket.  His clothes, of a nondescript brown mixture, were threadbare and
marked with stains, dusty in the folds, with ragged button-holes.  "The
detonator is partly mechanical, partly chemical," he explained, with
casual condescension.

"It is instantaneous, of course?" murmured Ossipon, with a slight
shudder.

"Far from it," confessed the other, with a reluctance which seemed to
twist his mouth dolorously.  "A full twenty seconds must elapse from the
moment I press the ball till the explosion takes place."

"Phew!" whistled Ossipon, completely appalled.  "Twenty seconds!
Horrors!  You mean to say that you could face that?  I should go crazy--"

"Wouldn't matter if you did.  Of course, it's the weak point of this
special system, which is only for my own use.  The worst is that the
manner of exploding is always the weak point with us.  I am trying to
invent a detonator that would adjust itself to all conditions of action,
and even to unexpected changes of conditions.  A variable and yet
perfectly precise mechanism.  A really intelligent detonator."

"Twenty seconds," muttered Ossipon again.  "Ough!  And then--"

With a slight turn of the head the glitter of the spectacles seemed to
gauge the size of the beer saloon in the basement of the renowned Silenus
Restaurant.

"Nobody in this room could hope to escape," was the verdict of that
survey.  "Nor yet this couple going up the stairs now."

The piano at the foot of the staircase clanged through a mazurka with
brazen impetuosity, as though a vulgar and impudent ghost were showing
off.  The keys sank and rose mysteriously.  Then all became still.  For a
moment Ossipon imagined the overlighted place changed into a dreadful
black hole belching horrible fumes choked with ghastly rubbish of smashed
brickwork and mutilated corpses.  He had such a distinct perception of
ruin and death that he shuddered again.  The other observed, with an air
of calm sufficiency:

"In the last instance it is character alone that makes for one's safety.
There are very few people in the world whose character is as well
established as mine."

"I wonder how you managed it," growled Ossipon.

"Force of personality," said the other, without raising his voice; and
coming from the mouth of that obviously miserable organism the assertion
caused the robust Ossipon to bite his lower lip.  "Force of personality,"
he repeated, with ostentatious calm.  "I have the means to make myself
deadly, but that by itself, you understand, is absolutely nothing in the
way of protection.  What is effective is the belief those people have in
my will to use the means.  That's their impression.  It is absolute.
Therefore I am deadly."

"There are individuals of character amongst that lot too," muttered
Ossipon ominously.

"Possibly.  But it is a matter of degree obviously, since, for instance,
I am not impressed by them.  Therefore they are inferior.  They cannot be
otherwise.  Their character is built upon conventional morality.  It
leans on the social order.  Mine stands free from everything artificial.
They are bound in all sorts of conventions.  They depend on life, which,
in this connection, is a historical fact surrounded by all sorts of
restraints and considerations, a complex organised fact open to attack at
every point; whereas I depend on death, which knows no restraint and
cannot be attacked.  My superiority is evident."

"This is a transcendental way of putting it," said Ossipon, watching the
cold glitter of the round spectacles.  "I've heard Karl Yundt say much
the same thing not very long ago."

"Karl Yundt," mumbled the other contemptuously, "the delegate of the
International Red Committee, has been a posturing shadow all his life.
There are three of you delegates, aren't there?  I won't define the other
two, as you are one of them.  But what you say means nothing.  You are
the worthy delegates for revolutionary propaganda, but the trouble is not
only that you are as unable to think independently as any respectable
grocer or journalist of them all, but that you have no character
whatever."

Ossipon could not restrain a start of indignation.

"But what do you want from us?" he exclaimed in a deadened voice.  "What
is it you are after yourself?"

"A perfect detonator," was the peremptory answer.  "What are you making
that face for?  You see, you can't even bear the mention of something
conclusive."

"I am not making a face," growled the annoyed Ossipon bearishly.

"You revolutionists," the other continued, with leisurely
self-confidence, "are the slaves of the social convention, which is
afraid of you; slaves of it as much as the very police that stands up in
the defence of that convention.  Clearly you are, since you want to
revolutionise it.  It governs your thought, of course, and your action
too, and thus neither your thought nor your action can ever be
conclusive."  He paused, tranquil, with that air of close, endless
silence, then almost immediately went on.  "You are not a bit better than
the forces arrayed against you--than the police, for instance.  The other
day I came suddenly upon Chief Inspector Heat at the corner of Tottenham
Court Road.  He looked at me very steadily.  But I did not look at him.
Why should I give him more than a glance?  He was thinking of many
things--of his superiors, of his reputation, of the law courts, of his
salary, of newspapers--of a hundred things.  But I was thinking of my
perfect detonator only.  He meant nothing to me.  He was as insignificant
as--I can't call to mind anything insignificant enough to compare him
with--except Karl Yundt perhaps.  Like to like.  The terrorist and the
policeman both come from the same basket.  Revolution, legality--counter
moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical.  He plays
his little game--so do you propagandists.  But I don't play; I work
fourteen hours a day, and go hungry sometimes.  My experiments cost money
now and again, and then I must do without food for a day or two.  You're
looking at my beer.  Yes.  I have had two glasses already, and shall have
another presently.  This is a little holiday, and I celebrate it alone.
Why not?  I've the grit to work alone, quite alone, absolutely alone.
I've worked alone for years."

Ossipon's face had turned dusky red.

"At the perfect detonator--eh?" he sneered, very low.

"Yes," retorted the other.  "It is a good definition.  You couldn't find
anything half so precise to define the nature of your activity with all
your committees and delegations.  It is I who am the true propagandist."

"We won't discuss that point," said Ossipon, with an air of rising above
personal considerations.  "I am afraid I'll have to spoil your holiday
for you, though.  There's a man blown up in Greenwich Park this morning."

"How do you know?"

"They have been yelling the news in the streets since two o'clock.  I
bought the paper, and just ran in here.  Then I saw you sitting at this
table.  I've got it in my pocket now."

He pulled the newspaper out.  It was a good-sized rosy sheet, as if
flushed by the warmth of its own convictions, which were optimistic.  He
scanned the pages rapidly.

"Ah!  Here it is.  Bomb in Greenwich Park.  There isn't much so far.
Half-past eleven.  Foggy morning.  Effects of explosion felt as far as
Romney Road and Park Place.  Enormous hole in the ground under a tree
filled with smashed roots and broken branches.  All round fragments of a
man's body blown to pieces.  That's all.  The rest's mere newspaper gup.
No doubt a wicked attempt to blow up the Observatory, they say.  H'm.
That's hardly credible."

He looked at the paper for a while longer in silence, then passed it to
the other, who after gazing abstractedly at the print laid it down
without comment.

It was Ossipon who spoke first--still resentful.

"The fragments of only _one_ man, you note.  Ergo: blew _himself_ up.
That spoils your day off for you--don't it?  Were you expecting that sort
of move?  I hadn't the slightest idea--not the ghost of a notion of
anything of the sort being planned to come off here--in this country.
Under the present circumstances it's nothing short of criminal."

The little man lifted his thin black eyebrows with dispassionate scorn.

"Criminal!  What is that?  What _is_ crime?  What can be the meaning of
such an assertion?"

"How am I to express myself?  One must use the current words," said
Ossipon impatiently.  "The meaning of this assertion is that this
business may affect our position very adversely in this country.  Isn't
that crime enough for you?  I am convinced you have been giving away some
of your stuff lately."

Ossipon stared hard.  The other, without flinching, lowered and raised
his head slowly.

"You have!" burst out the editor of the F. P. leaflets in an intense
whisper.  "No!  And are you really handing it over at large like this,
for the asking, to the first fool that comes along?"

"Just so!  The condemned social order has not been built up on paper and
ink, and I don't fancy that a combination of paper and ink will ever put
an end to it, whatever you may think.  Yes, I would give the stuff with
both hands to every man, woman, or fool that likes to come along.  I know
what you are thinking about.  But I am not taking my cue from the Red
Committee.  I would see you all hounded out of here, or arrested--or
beheaded for that matter--without turning a hair.  What happens to us as
individuals is not of the least consequence."

He spoke carelessly, without heat, almost without feeling, and Ossipon,
secretly much affected, tried to copy this detachment.

"If the police here knew their business they would shoot you full of
holes with revolvers, or else try to sand-bag you from behind in broad
daylight."

The little man seemed already to have considered that point of view in
his dispassionate self-confident manner.

"Yes," he assented with the utmost readiness.  "But for that they would
have to face their own institutions.  Do you see?  That requires uncommon
grit.  Grit of a special kind."

Ossipon blinked.

"I fancy that's exactly what would happen to you if you were to set up
your laboratory in the States.  They don't stand on ceremony with their
institutions there."

"I am not likely to go and see.  Otherwise your remark is just," admitted
the other.  "They have more character over there, and their character is
essentially anarchistic.  Fertile ground for us, the States--very good
ground.  The great Republic has the root of the destructive matter in
her.  The collective temperament is lawless.  Excellent.  They may shoot
us down, but--"

"You are too transcendental for me," growled Ossipon, with moody concern.

"Logical," protested the other.  "There are several kinds of logic.  This
is the enlightened kind.  America is all right.  It is this country that
is dangerous, with her idealistic conception of legality.  The social
spirit of this people is wrapped up in scrupulous prejudices, and that is
fatal to our work.  You talk of England being our only refuge!  So much
the worse.  Capua!  What do we want with refuges?  Here you talk, print,
plot, and do nothing.  I daresay it's very convenient for such Karl
Yundts."

He shrugged his shoulders slightly, then added with the same leisurely
assurance: "To break up the superstition and worship of legality should
be our aim.  Nothing would please me more than to see Inspector Heat and
his likes take to shooting us down in broad daylight with the approval of
the public.  Half our battle would be won then; the disintegration of the
old morality would have set in in its very temple.  That is what you
ought to aim at.  But you revolutionists will never understand that.  You
plan the future, you lose yourselves in reveries of economical systems
derived from what is; whereas what's wanted is a clean sweep and a clear
start for a new conception of life.  That sort of future will take care
of itself if you will only make room for it.  Therefore I would shovel my
stuff in heaps at the corners of the streets if I had enough for that;
and as I haven't, I do my best by perfecting a really dependable
detonator."

Ossipon, who had been mentally swimming in deep waters, seized upon the
last word as if it were a saving plank.

"Yes.  Your detonators.  I shouldn't wonder if it weren't one of your
detonators that made a clean sweep of the man in the park."

A shade of vexation darkened the determined sallow face confronting
Ossipon.

"My difficulty consists precisely in experimenting practically with the
various kinds.  They must be tried after all.  Besides--"

Ossipon interrupted.

"Who could that fellow be?  I assure you that we in London had no
knowledge--Couldn't you describe the person you gave the stuff to?"

The other turned his spectacles upon Ossipon like a pair of searchlights.

"Describe him," he repeated slowly.  "I don't think there can be the
slightest objection now.  I will describe him to you in one
word--Verloc."

Ossipon, whom curiosity had lifted a few inches off his seat, dropped
back, as if hit in the face.

"Verloc!  Impossible."

The self-possessed little man nodded slightly once.

"Yes.  He's the person.  You can't say that in this case I was giving my
stuff to the first fool that came along.  He was a prominent member of
the group as far as I understand."

"Yes," said Ossipon.  "Prominent.  No, not exactly.  He was the centre
for general intelligence, and usually received comrades coming over here.
More useful than important.  Man of no ideas.  Years ago he used to speak
at meetings--in France, I believe.  Not very well, though.  He was
trusted by such men as Latorre, Moser and all that old lot.  The only
talent he showed really was his ability to elude the attentions of the
police somehow.  Here, for instance, he did not seem to be looked after
very closely.  He was regularly married, you know.  I suppose it's with
her money that he started that shop.  Seemed to make it pay, too."

Ossipon paused abruptly, muttered to himself "I wonder what that woman
will do now?" and fell into thought.

The other waited with ostentatious indifference.  His parentage was
obscure, and he was generally known only by his nickname of Professor.
His title to that designation consisted in his having been once assistant
demonstrator in chemistry at some technical institute.  He quarrelled
with the authorities upon a question of unfair treatment.  Afterwards he
obtained a post in the laboratory of a manufactory of dyes.  There too he
had been treated with revolting injustice.  His struggles, his
privations, his hard work to raise himself in the social scale, had
filled him with such an exalted conviction of his merits that it was
extremely difficult for the world to treat him with justice--the standard
of that notion depending so much upon the patience of the individual.
The Professor had genius, but lacked the great social virtue of
resignation.

"Intellectually a nonentity," Ossipon pronounced aloud, abandoning
suddenly the inward contemplation of Mrs Verloc's bereaved person and
business.  "Quite an ordinary personality.  You are wrong in not keeping
more in touch with the comrades, Professor," he added in a reproving
tone.  "Did he say anything to you--give you some idea of his intentions?
I hadn't seen him for a month.  It seems impossible that he should be
gone."

"He told me it was going to be a demonstration against a building," said
the Professor.  "I had to know that much to prepare the missile.  I
pointed out to him that I had hardly a sufficient quantity for a
completely destructive result, but he pressed me very earnestly to do my
best.  As he wanted something that could be carried openly in the hand, I
proposed to make use of an old one-gallon copal varnish can I happened to
have by me.  He was pleased at the idea.  It gave me some trouble,
because I had to cut out the bottom first and solder it on again
afterwards.  When prepared for use, the can enclosed a wide-mouthed,
well-corked jar of thick glass packed around with some wet clay and
containing sixteen ounces of X2 green powder.  The detonator was
connected with the screw top of the can.  It was ingenious--a combination
of time and shock.  I explained the system to him.  It was a thin tube of
tin enclosing a--"

Ossipon's attention had wandered.

"What do you think has happened?" he interrupted.

"Can't tell.  Screwed the top on tight, which would make the connection,
and then forgot the time.  It was set for twenty minutes.  On the other
hand, the time contact being made, a sharp shock would bring about the
explosion at once.  He either ran the time too close, or simply let the
thing fall.  The contact was made all right--that's clear to me at any
rate.  The system's worked perfectly.  And yet you would think that a
common fool in a hurry would be much more likely to forget to make the
contact altogether.  I was worrying myself about that sort of failure
mostly.  But there are more kinds of fools than one can guard against.
You can't expect a detonator to be absolutely fool-proof."

He beckoned to a waiter.  Ossipon sat rigid, with the abstracted gaze of
mental travail.  After the man had gone away with the money he roused
himself, with an air of profound dissatisfaction.

"It's extremely unpleasant for me," he mused.  "Karl has been in bed with
bronchitis for a week.  There's an even chance that he will never get up
again.  Michaelis's luxuriating in the country somewhere.  A fashionable
publisher has offered him five hundred pounds for a book.  It will be a
ghastly failure.  He has lost the habit of consecutive thinking in
prison, you know."

The Professor on his feet, now buttoning his coat, looked about him with
perfect indifference.

"What are you going to do?" asked Ossipon wearily.  He dreaded the blame
of the Central Red Committee, a body which had no permanent place of
abode, and of whose membership he was not exactly informed.  If this
affair eventuated in the stoppage of the modest subsidy allotted to the
publication of the F. P. pamphlets, then indeed he would have to regret
Verloc's inexplicable folly.

"Solidarity with the extremest form of action is one thing, and silly
recklessness is another," he said, with a sort of moody brutality.  "I
don't know what came to Verloc.  There's some mystery there.  However,
he's gone.  You may take it as you like, but under the circumstances the
only policy for the militant revolutionary group is to disclaim all
connection with this damned freak of yours.  How to make the disclaimer
convincing enough is what bothers me."

The little man on his feet, buttoned up and ready to go, was no taller
than the seated Ossipon.  He levelled his spectacles at the latter's face
point-blank.

"You might ask the police for a testimonial of good conduct.  They know
where every one of you slept last night.  Perhaps if you asked them they
would consent to publish some sort of official statement."

"No doubt they are aware well enough that we had nothing to do with
this," mumbled Ossipon bitterly.  "What they will say is another thing."
He remained thoughtful, disregarding the short, owlish, shabby figure
standing by his side.  "I must lay hands on Michaelis at once, and get
him to speak from his heart at one of our gatherings.  The public has a
sort of sentimental regard for that fellow.  His name is known.  And I am
in touch with a few reporters on the big dailies.  What he would say
would be utter bosh, but he has a turn of talk that makes it go down all
the same."

"Like treacle," interjected the Professor, rather low, keeping an
impassive expression.

The perplexed Ossipon went on communing with himself half audibly, after
the manner of a man reflecting in perfect solitude.

"Confounded ass!  To leave such an imbecile business on my hands.  And I
don't even know if--"

He sat with compressed lips.  The idea of going for news straight to the
shop lacked charm.  His notion was that Verloc's shop might have been
turned already into a police trap.  They will be bound to make some
arrests, he thought, with something resembling virtuous indignation, for
the even tenor of his revolutionary life was menaced by no fault of his.
And yet unless he went there he ran the risk of remaining in ignorance of
what perhaps it would be very material for him to know.  Then he
reflected that, if the man in the park had been so very much blown to
pieces as the evening papers said, he could not have been identified.
And if so, the police could have no special reason for watching Verloc's
shop more closely than any other place known to be frequented by marked
anarchists--no more reason, in fact, than for watching the doors of the
Silenus.  There would be a lot of watching all round, no matter where he
went.  Still--

"I wonder what I had better do now?" he muttered, taking counsel with
himself.

A rasping voice at his elbow said, with sedate scorn:

"Fasten yourself upon the woman for all she's worth."

After uttering these words the Professor walked away from the table.
Ossipon, whom that piece of insight had taken unawares, gave one
ineffectual start, and remained still, with a helpless gaze, as though
nailed fast to the seat of his chair.  The lonely piano, without as much
as a music stool to help it, struck a few chords courageously, and
beginning a selection of national airs, played him out at last to the
tune of "Blue Bells of Scotland."  The painfully detached notes grew
faint behind his back while he went slowly upstairs, across the hall, and
into the street.

In front of the great doorway a dismal row of newspaper sellers standing
clear of the pavement dealt out their wares from the gutter.  It was a
raw, gloomy day of the early spring; and the grimy sky, the mud of the
streets, the rags of the dirty men, harmonised excellently with the
eruption of the damp, rubbishy sheets of paper soiled with printers' ink.
The posters, maculated with filth, garnished like tapestry the sweep of
the curbstone.  The trade in afternoon papers was brisk, yet, in
comparison with the swift, constant march of foot traffic, the effect was
of indifference, of a disregarded distribution.  Ossipon looked hurriedly
both ways before stepping out into the cross-currents, but the Professor
was already out of sight.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The narrator describes a nicely decorated downstairs lounge called the Silenus Restaurant. Comrade Ossipon sits at a table and starts talking about a "confounded affair" to another person. The big, muscular Ossipon seems to be nervous around this other guy, even though the narrator describes the guy as "frail enough for Ossipon to crush between his thumb and forefinger" . Ossipon asks a couple questions about whether the other guys have been out that day. Then he has a vision of the other man walking down the street, scaring everyone away with the sight of his black-rimmed glasses. You still don't know why this little twerp is so intimidating to Ossipon. It turns out that Ossipon's been asking these questions because he wants to know if this other man has heard the news that's been going around London. When he realizes that the other guy doesn't know what he's talking about, Ossipon leans over the table and asks the other guy, "Do you give your stuff to anybody who's up to asking for it?" . The other man says that his rule is never to refuse anyone who asks for some of his mysterious "wares." Ossipon isn't happy about this, but the other guy isn't all that concerned. He knows that the cops won't come anywhere near him because "they know very well that take care never to part with the last of wares" . So from this, we can figure out that this little dude keeps something on him " a thick glass flask" that keeps the cops from coming after him. When pressed, this guy explains to Ossipon that if anyone tried to lay a hand on him, he'd blow himself up and take out everything within sixty yards of him. So basically, this guy lives with a bomb on him at all times. Not a strategy for the faint-hearted. To avoid getting taken by surprise, the man has rigged his bomb to a little rubber ball he carries in his pocket. One squeeze of this detonator will blow up his bomb. He shows Ossipon the tube running from his pants pocket to the breast pocket of his jacket. Ossipon asks if the detonation is instant, but the bomb guy says that it actually takes twenty seconds for detonation. The bomb guy admits that this is a design issue with his detonator, and adds that his great dream is to create a perfect detonator: one that could adjust to any situation and always work perfectly. While this exchange takes place, a player piano near the doorway starts up by itself and plays songs seemingly at random, contributing to the notion of a random universe that Conrad develops throughout this novel. The bomb guy goes on to say that at the end of the day, it's not just having a bomb, but having a strong character that makes a person safe. The guy refers to this strength as "force of personality," explaining that its not his bomb that makes him deadly, but the fact that everyone knows he's willing to blow himself up . In his eyes, this is what makes him so much better than everyone else. At this point, you realize that the little bomb guy is basically a total psychopath. He's completely convinced that he's superior to everyone around him, and is willing to die to prove it. For example, when Ossipon says that other people might also have force of character, the bomb-guy says that he is "not impressed by them. Therefore they are inferior" . For the bomb guy, the sheer belief that he's better than people is enough to make it real. The bomb guy's reason for why he's so superior to others is, because unlike normal people, his awesomeness "depend on death, which knows no restraint and cannot be attacked" . If he's willing to die, then there's nothing that society can really threaten him with. In a sense, he's got the Braveheart logic down pat: "They may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!" Ossipon doesn't know how to deal with this guy, so he asks him what he wants out of life. The bomb guy just says that he wants a "perfect detonator" and nothing else. Then he talks some serious smack about Ossipon for being a typical radical who just sits around whining about society and never doing anything about it. By this point, Ossipon is getting pretty flustered. But the guy's got an ace up his sleeve. He springs the news that he's been tiptoeing around since entering the lounge. Word on the street is that "There's a man blown up in Greenwich Park" , and the papers are saying it was part of an attempt to blow up the Greenwich observatory. Ossipon gloats that this must spoil the bomb dude's day, since a man has just gone and randomly done the very thing that's supposed to make the bomb dude so special. Ossipon goes on to say that he had no clue that any such attack was being planned by the anarchists, and is really worried that this little stunt will bring hellfire down on the anarchists and left-wing radicals in England. Also, he's pretty miffed at the bomb dude for just giving his explosives away to whoever asks for them. The bomb guy replies that the world doesn't get changed with pen and ink, but with bombs, and that he couldn't care less if Ossipon and all his buddies were rounded up and killed. Ossipon goes on to tell the bomb guy that the police should just shoot him dead in the street, which would definitely happen if the bomb guy lived in the United States instead of England. According to Ossipon, Americans are more willing to ignore the law if it means getting a job done. The bomb guy insists that what anarchists want is for cops to just start shooting people in broad daylight, because this would bring about the total collapse of the law, which is supposed to be the goal of anarchism. But Ossipon and his kind will never understand this. Ossipon changes the subject, and straight up asks who it was that blew himself up in Greenwich. The bomb-guy only needs to say one word: "Verloc" . Ossipon is floored, but the first thing he wonders about is what Verloc's wife Winnie will do now that Verloc's dead. Meanwhile, the bomb guy just sits there without much interest. You find out at this point that he tends to go by the nickname of "The Professor" . In the past, The Professor held a few jobs as a chemist . But he always thought he was being treated unfairly. "His struggles, his privations, his hard work to raise himself in the social scale, had filled him with such an exalted conviction of his merits that it was extremely difficult for the world to treat him with justice" . Basically, the guy is convinced of his greatness, and sees it as a horrible injustice when people don't bow down to him. He either plays by his own rules, or blows up himself and everyone around him. It's tough to negotiate with a guy like that. Ossipon can't believe what he's heard. He doesn't seem to respect Verloc intellectually, and wonders how the man could have found the courage to get himself blown up. The Professor basically says that Verloc either must have misjudged the bomb's timer or simply dropped the thing by accident. The Professor gets up to leave. Ossipon thinks of going to Verloc's shop to see Winnie, but is worried that police might be waiting there. He wonders out loud about what he should do. The Professor leans into his ear and says, "Fasten yourself upon the woman for all she's worth" . Ossipon leaves the lounge after the Professor, but can't see the little dude once he's in the street. There are posters spread all over the ground and covered in filth. Ossipon looks among the crowds of people surging through the street, and realizes that "The trade in afternoon papers was brisk, yet, in comparison with the swift, constant march of foot traffic, the effect was of indifference, of a disregarded distribution" . Theme alert! This observation touches on the themes of randomness and indifference that Conrad explores throughout this book.