Chapter: Such was the house, the household, and the business Mr Verloc left behind
him on his way westward at the hour of half-past ten in the morning.  It
was unusually early for him; his whole person exhaled the charm of almost
dewy freshness; he wore his blue cloth overcoat unbuttoned; his boots
were shiny; his cheeks, freshly shaven, had a sort of gloss; and even his
heavy-lidded eyes, refreshed by a night of peaceful slumber, sent out
glances of comparative alertness.  Through the park railings these
glances beheld men and women riding in the Row, couples cantering past
harmoniously, others advancing sedately at a walk, loitering groups of
three or four, solitary horsemen looking unsociable, and solitary women
followed at a long distance by a groom with a cockade to his hat and a
leather belt over his tight-fitting coat.  Carriages went bowling by,
mostly two-horse broughams, with here and there a victoria with the skin
of some wild beast inside and a woman's face and hat emerging above the
folded hood.  And a peculiarly London sun--against which nothing could be
said except that it looked bloodshot--glorified all this by its stare.
It hung at a moderate elevation above Hyde Park Corner with an air of
punctual and benign vigilance.  The very pavement under Mr Verloc's feet
had an old-gold tinge in that diffused light, in which neither wall, nor
tree, nor beast, nor man cast a shadow.  Mr Verloc was going westward
through a town without shadows in an atmosphere of powdered old gold.
There were red, coppery gleams on the roofs of houses, on the corners of
walls, on the panels of carriages, on the very coats of the horses, and
on the broad back of Mr Verloc's overcoat, where they produced a dull
effect of rustiness.  But Mr Verloc was not in the least conscious of
having got rusty.  He surveyed through the park railings the evidences of
the town's opulence and luxury with an approving eye.  All these people
had to be protected.  Protection is the first necessity of opulence and
luxury.  They had to be protected; and their horses, carriages, houses,
servants had to be protected; and the source of their wealth had to be
protected in the heart of the city and the heart of the country; the
whole social order favourable to their hygienic idleness had to be
protected against the shallow enviousness of unhygienic labour.  It had
to--and Mr Verloc would have rubbed his hands with satisfaction had he
not been constitutionally averse from every superfluous exertion.  His
idleness was not hygienic, but it suited him very well.  He was in a
manner devoted to it with a sort of inert fanaticism, or perhaps rather
with a fanatical inertness.  Born of industrious parents for a life of
toil, he had embraced indolence from an impulse as profound as
inexplicable and as imperious as the impulse which directs a man's
preference for one particular woman in a given thousand.  He was too lazy
even for a mere demagogue, for a workman orator, for a leader of labour.
It was too much trouble.  He required a more perfect form of ease; or it
might have been that he was the victim of a philosophical unbelief in the
effectiveness of every human effort.  Such a form of indolence requires,
implies, a certain amount of intelligence.  Mr Verloc was not devoid of
intelligence--and at the notion of a menaced social order he would
perhaps have winked to himself if there had not been an effort to make in
that sign of scepticism.  His big, prominent eyes were not well adapted
to winking.  They were rather of the sort that closes solemnly in slumber
with majestic effect.

Undemonstrative and burly in a fat-pig style, Mr Verloc, without either
rubbing his hands with satisfaction or winking sceptically at his
thoughts, proceeded on his way.  He trod the pavement heavily with his
shiny boots, and his general get-up was that of a well-to-do mechanic in
business for himself.  He might have been anything from a picture-frame
maker to a lock-smith; an employer of labour in a small way.  But there
was also about him an indescribable air which no mechanic could have
acquired in the practice of his handicraft however dishonestly exercised:
the air common to men who live on the vices, the follies, or the baser
fears of mankind; the air of moral nihilism common to keepers of gambling
hells and disorderly houses; to private detectives and inquiry agents; to
drink sellers and, I should say, to the sellers of invigorating electric
belts and to the inventors of patent medicines.  But of that last I am
not sure, not having carried my investigations so far into the depths.
For all I know, the expression of these last may be perfectly diabolic.
I shouldn't be surprised.  What I want to affirm is that Mr Verloc's
expression was by no means diabolic.

Before reaching Knightsbridge, Mr Verloc took a turn to the left out of
the busy main thoroughfare, uproarious with the traffic of swaying
omnibuses and trotting vans, in the almost silent, swift flow of hansoms.
Under his hat, worn with a slight backward tilt, his hair had been
carefully brushed into respectful sleekness; for his business was with an
Embassy.  And Mr Verloc, steady like a rock--a soft kind of rock--marched
now along a street which could with every propriety be described as
private.  In its breadth, emptiness, and extent it had the majesty of
inorganic nature, of matter that never dies.  The only reminder of
mortality was a doctor's brougham arrested in august solitude close to
the curbstone.  The polished knockers of the doors gleamed as far as the
eye could reach, the clean windows shone with a dark opaque lustre.  And
all was still.  But a milk cart rattled noisily across the distant
perspective; a butcher boy, driving with the noble recklessness of a
charioteer at Olympic Games, dashed round the corner sitting high above a
pair of red wheels.  A guilty-looking cat issuing from under the stones
ran for a while in front of Mr Verloc, then dived into another basement;
and a thick police constable, looking a stranger to every emotion, as if
he too were part of inorganic nature, surging apparently out of a
lamp-post, took not the slightest notice of Mr Verloc.  With a turn to
the left Mr Verloc pursued his way along a narrow street by the side of a
yellow wall which, for some inscrutable reason, had No. 1 Chesham Square
written on it in black letters.  Chesham Square was at least sixty yards
away, and Mr Verloc, cosmopolitan enough not to be deceived by London's
topographical mysteries, held on steadily, without a sign of surprise or
indignation.  At last, with business-like persistency, he reached the
Square, and made diagonally for the number 10.  This belonged to an
imposing carriage gate in a high, clean wall between two houses, of which
one rationally enough bore the number 9 and the other was numbered 37;
but the fact that this last belonged to Porthill Street, a street well
known in the neighbourhood, was proclaimed by an inscription placed above
the ground-floor windows by whatever highly efficient authority is
charged with the duty of keeping track of London's strayed houses.  Why
powers are not asked of Parliament (a short act would do) for compelling
those edifices to return where they belong is one of the mysteries of
municipal administration.  Mr Verloc did not trouble his head about it,
his mission in life being the protection of the social mechanism, not its
perfectionment or even its criticism.

It was so early that the porter of the Embassy issued hurriedly out of
his lodge still struggling with the left sleeve of his livery coat.  His
waistcoat was red, and he wore knee-breeches, but his aspect was
flustered.  Mr Verloc, aware of the rush on his flank, drove it off by
simply holding out an envelope stamped with the arms of the Embassy, and
passed on.  He produced the same talisman also to the footman who opened
the door, and stood back to let him enter the hall.

A clear fire burned in a tall fireplace, and an elderly man standing with
his back to it, in evening dress and with a chain round his neck, glanced
up from the newspaper he was holding spread out in both hands before his
calm and severe face.  He didn't move; but another lackey, in brown
trousers and claw-hammer coat edged with thin yellow cord, approaching Mr
Verloc listened to the murmur of his name, and turning round on his heel
in silence, began to walk, without looking back once.  Mr Verloc, thus
led along a ground-floor passage to the left of the great carpeted
staircase, was suddenly motioned to enter a quite small room furnished
with a heavy writing-table and a few chairs.  The servant shut the door,
and Mr Verloc remained alone.  He did not take a seat.  With his hat and
stick held in one hand he glanced about, passing his other podgy hand
over his uncovered sleek head.

Another door opened noiselessly, and Mr Verloc immobilising his glance in
that direction saw at first only black clothes, the bald top of a head,
and a drooping dark grey whisker on each side of a pair of wrinkled
hands.  The person who had entered was holding a batch of papers before
his eyes and walked up to the table with a rather mincing step, turning
the papers over the while.  Privy Councillor Wurmt, Chancelier
d'Ambassade, was rather short-sighted.  This meritorious official laying
the papers on the table, disclosed a face of pasty complexion and of
melancholy ugliness surrounded by a lot of fine, long dark grey hairs,
barred heavily by thick and bushy eyebrows.  He put on a black-framed
pince-nez upon a blunt and shapeless nose, and seemed struck by Mr
Verloc's appearance.  Under the enormous eyebrows his weak eyes blinked
pathetically through the glasses.

He made no sign of greeting; neither did Mr Verloc, who certainly knew
his place; but a subtle change about the general outlines of his
shoulders and back suggested a slight bending of Mr Verloc's spine under
the vast surface of his overcoat.  The effect was of unobtrusive
deference.

"I have here some of your reports," said the bureaucrat in an
unexpectedly soft and weary voice, and pressing the tip of his forefinger
on the papers with force.  He paused; and Mr Verloc, who had recognised
his own handwriting very well, waited in an almost breathless silence.
"We are not very satisfied with the attitude of the police here," the
other continued, with every appearance of mental fatigue.

The shoulders of Mr Verloc, without actually moving, suggested a shrug.
And for the first time since he left his home that morning his lips
opened.

"Every country has its police," he said philosophically.  But as the
official of the Embassy went on blinking at him steadily he felt
constrained to add: "Allow me to observe that I have no means of action
upon the police here."

"What is desired," said the man of papers, "is the occurrence of
something definite which should stimulate their vigilance.  That is
within your province--is it not so?"

Mr Verloc made no answer except by a sigh, which escaped him
involuntarily, for instantly he tried to give his face a cheerful
expression.  The official blinked doubtfully, as if affected by the dim
light of the room.  He repeated vaguely.

"The vigilance of the police--and the severity of the magistrates.  The
general leniency of the judicial procedure here, and the utter absence of
all repressive measures, are a scandal to Europe.  What is wished for
just now is the accentuation of the unrest--of the fermentation which
undoubtedly exists--"

"Undoubtedly, undoubtedly," broke in Mr Verloc in a deep deferential bass
of an oratorical quality, so utterly different from the tone in which he
had spoken before that his interlocutor remained profoundly surprised.
"It exists to a dangerous degree.  My reports for the last twelve months
make it sufficiently clear."

"Your reports for the last twelve months," State Councillor Wurmt began
in his gentle and dispassionate tone, "have been read by me.  I failed to
discover why you wrote them at all."

A sad silence reigned for a time.  Mr Verloc seemed to have swallowed his
tongue, and the other gazed at the papers on the table fixedly.  At last
he gave them a slight push.

"The state of affairs you expose there is assumed to exist as the first
condition of your employment.  What is required at present is not
writing, but the bringing to light of a distinct, significant fact--I
would almost say of an alarming fact."

"I need not say that all my endeavours shall be directed to that end," Mr
Verloc said, with convinced modulations in his conversational husky tone.
But the sense of being blinked at watchfully behind the blind glitter of
these eye-glasses on the other side of the table disconcerted him.  He
stopped short with a gesture of absolute devotion.  The useful,
hard-working, if obscure member of the Embassy had an air of being
impressed by some newly-born thought.

"You are very corpulent," he said.

This observation, really of a psychological nature, and advanced with the
modest hesitation of an officeman more familiar with ink and paper than
with the requirements of active life, stung Mr Verloc in the manner of a
rude personal remark.  He stepped back a pace.

"Eh?  What were you pleased to say?" he exclaimed, with husky resentment.

The Chancelier d'Ambassade entrusted with the conduct of this interview
seemed to find it too much for him.

"I think," he said, "that you had better see Mr Vladimir.  Yes, decidedly
I think you ought to see Mr Vladimir.  Be good enough to wait here," he
added, and went out with mincing steps.

At once Mr Verloc passed his hand over his hair.  A slight perspiration
had broken out on his forehead.  He let the air escape from his pursed-up
lips like a man blowing at a spoonful of hot soup.  But when the servant
in brown appeared at the door silently, Mr Verloc had not moved an inch
from the place he had occupied throughout the interview.  He had remained
motionless, as if feeling himself surrounded by pitfalls.

He walked along a passage lighted by a lonely gas-jet, then up a flight
of winding stairs, and through a glazed and cheerful corridor on the
first floor.  The footman threw open a door, and stood aside.  The feet
of Mr Verloc felt a thick carpet.  The room was large, with three
windows; and a young man with a shaven, big face, sitting in a roomy
arm-chair before a vast mahogany writing-table, said in French to the
Chancelier d'Ambassade, who was going out with the papers in his hand:

"You are quite right, mon cher.  He's fat--the animal."

Mr Vladimir, First Secretary, had a drawing-room reputation as an
agreeable and entertaining man.  He was something of a favourite in
society.  His wit consisted in discovering droll connections between
incongruous ideas; and when talking in that strain he sat well forward of
his seat, with his left hand raised, as if exhibiting his funny
demonstrations between the thumb and forefinger, while his round and
clean-shaven face wore an expression of merry perplexity.

But there was no trace of merriment or perplexity in the way he looked at
Mr Verloc.  Lying far back in the deep arm-chair, with squarely spread
elbows, and throwing one leg over a thick knee, he had with his smooth
and rosy countenance the air of a preternaturally thriving baby that will
not stand nonsense from anybody.

"You understand French, I suppose?" he said.

Mr Verloc stated huskily that he did.  His whole vast bulk had a forward
inclination.  He stood on the carpet in the middle of the room, clutching
his hat and stick in one hand; the other hung lifelessly by his side.  He
muttered unobtrusively somewhere deep down in his throat something about
having done his military service in the French artillery.  At once, with
contemptuous perversity, Mr Vladimir changed the language, and began to
speak idiomatic English without the slightest trace of a foreign accent.

"Ah!  Yes.  Of course.  Let's see.  How much did you get for obtaining
the design of the improved breech-block of their new field-gun?"

"Five years' rigorous confinement in a fortress," Mr Verloc answered
unexpectedly, but without any sign of feeling.

"You got off easily," was Mr Vladimir's comment.  "And, anyhow, it served
you right for letting yourself get caught.  What made you go in for that
sort of thing--eh?"

Mr Verloc's husky conversational voice was heard speaking of youth, of a
fatal infatuation for an unworthy--

"Aha!  Cherchez la femme," Mr Vladimir deigned to interrupt, unbending,
but without affability; there was, on the contrary, a touch of grimness
in his condescension.  "How long have you been employed by the Embassy
here?" he asked.

"Ever since the time of the late Baron Stott-Wartenheim," Mr Verloc
answered in subdued tones, and protruding his lips sadly, in sign of
sorrow for the deceased diplomat.  The First Secretary observed this play
of physiognomy steadily.

"Ah! ever since.  Well!  What have you got to say for yourself?" he asked
sharply.

Mr Verloc answered with some surprise that he was not aware of having
anything special to say.  He had been summoned by a letter--And he
plunged his hand busily into the side pocket of his overcoat, but before
the mocking, cynical watchfulness of Mr Vladimir, concluded to leave it
there.

"Bah!" said that latter.  "What do you mean by getting out of condition
like this?  You haven't got even the physique of your profession.  You--a
member of a starving proletariat--never!  You--a desperate socialist or
anarchist--which is it?"

"Anarchist," stated Mr Verloc in a deadened tone.

"Bosh!" went on Mr Vladimir, without raising his voice.  "You startled
old Wurmt himself.  You wouldn't deceive an idiot.  They all are that
by-the-by, but you seem to me simply impossible.  So you began your
connection with us by stealing the French gun designs.  And you got
yourself caught.  That must have been very disagreeable to our
Government.  You don't seem to be very smart."

Mr Verloc tried to exculpate himself huskily.

"As I've had occasion to observe before, a fatal infatuation for an
unworthy--"

Mr Vladimir raised a large white, plump hand.  "Ah, yes.  The unlucky
attachment--of your youth.  She got hold of the money, and then sold you
to the police--eh?"

The doleful change in Mr Verloc's physiognomy, the momentary drooping of
his whole person, confessed that such was the regrettable case.  Mr
Vladimir's hand clasped the ankle reposing on his knee.  The sock was of
dark blue silk.

"You see, that was not very clever of you.  Perhaps you are too
susceptible."

Mr Verloc intimated in a throaty, veiled murmur that he was no longer
young.

"Oh!  That's a failing which age does not cure," Mr Vladimir remarked,
with sinister familiarity.  "But no!  You are too fat for that.  You
could not have come to look like this if you had been at all susceptible.
I'll tell you what I think is the matter: you are a lazy fellow.  How
long have you been drawing pay from this Embassy?"

"Eleven years," was the answer, after a moment of sulky hesitation.
"I've been charged with several missions to London while His Excellency
Baron Stott-Wartenheim was still Ambassador in Paris.  Then by his
Excellency's instructions I settled down in London.  I am English."

"You are!  Are you?  Eh?"

"A natural-born British subject," Mr Verloc said stolidly.  "But my
father was French, and so--"

"Never mind explaining," interrupted the other.  "I daresay you could
have been legally a Marshal of France and a Member of Parliament in
England--and then, indeed, you would have been of some use to our
Embassy."

This flight of fancy provoked something like a faint smile on Mr Verloc's
face.  Mr Vladimir retained an imperturbable gravity.

"But, as I've said, you are a lazy fellow; you don't use your
opportunities.  In the time of Baron Stott-Wartenheim we had a lot of
soft-headed people running this Embassy.  They caused fellows of your
sort to form a false conception of the nature of a secret service fund.
It is my business to correct this misapprehension by telling you what the
secret service is not.  It is not a philanthropic institution.  I've had
you called here on purpose to tell you this."

Mr Vladimir observed the forced expression of bewilderment on Verloc's
face, and smiled sarcastically.

"I see that you understand me perfectly.  I daresay you are intelligent
enough for your work.  What we want now is activity--activity."

On repeating this last word Mr Vladimir laid a long white forefinger on
the edge of the desk.  Every trace of huskiness disappeared from Verloc's
voice.  The nape of his gross neck became crimson above the velvet collar
of his overcoat.  His lips quivered before they came widely open.

"If you'll only be good enough to look up my record," he boomed out in
his great, clear oratorical bass, "you'll see I gave a warning only three
months ago, on the occasion of the Grand Duke Romuald's visit to Paris,
which was telegraphed from here to the French police, and--"

"Tut, tut!" broke out Mr Vladimir, with a frowning grimace.  "The French
police had no use for your warning.  Don't roar like this.  What the
devil do you mean?"

With a note of proud humility Mr Verloc apologised for forgetting
himself.  His voice,--famous for years at open-air meetings and at
workmen's assemblies in large halls, had contributed, he said, to his
reputation of a good and trustworthy comrade.  It was, therefore, a part
of his usefulness.  It had inspired confidence in his principles.  "I was
always put up to speak by the leaders at a critical moment," Mr Verloc
declared, with obvious satisfaction.  There was no uproar above which he
could not make himself heard, he added; and suddenly he made a
demonstration.

"Allow me," he said.  With lowered forehead, without looking up, swiftly
and ponderously he crossed the room to one of the French windows.  As if
giving way to an uncontrollable impulse, he opened it a little.  Mr
Vladimir, jumping up amazed from the depths of the arm-chair, looked over
his shoulder; and below, across the courtyard of the Embassy, well beyond
the open gate, could be seen the broad back of a policeman watching idly
the gorgeous perambulator of a wealthy baby being wheeled in state across
the Square.

"Constable!" said Mr Verloc, with no more effort than if he were
whispering; and Mr Vladimir burst into a laugh on seeing the policeman
spin round as if prodded by a sharp instrument.  Mr Verloc shut the
window quietly, and returned to the middle of the room.

"With a voice like that," he said, putting on the husky conversational
pedal, "I was naturally trusted.  And I knew what to say, too."

Mr Vladimir, arranging his cravat, observed him in the glass over the
mantelpiece.

"I daresay you have the social revolutionary jargon by heart well
enough," he said contemptuously.  "Vox et. . . You haven't ever studied
Latin--have you?"

"No," growled Mr Verloc.  "You did not expect me to know it.  I belong to
the million.  Who knows Latin?  Only a few hundred imbeciles who aren't
fit to take care of themselves."

For some thirty seconds longer Mr Vladimir studied in the mirror the
fleshy profile, the gross bulk, of the man behind him.  And at the same
time he had the advantage of seeing his own face, clean-shaved and round,
rosy about the gills, and with the thin sensitive lips formed exactly for
the utterance of those delicate witticisms which had made him such a
favourite in the very highest society.  Then he turned, and advanced into
the room with such determination that the very ends of his quaintly
old-fashioned bow necktie seemed to bristle with unspeakable menaces.
The movement was so swift and fierce that Mr Verloc, casting an oblique
glance, quailed inwardly.

"Aha!  You dare be impudent," Mr Vladimir began, with an amazingly
guttural intonation not only utterly un-English, but absolutely
un-European, and startling even to Mr Verloc's experience of cosmopolitan
slums.  "You dare!  Well, I am going to speak plain English to you.
Voice won't do.  We have no use for your voice.  We don't want a voice.
We want facts--startling facts--damn you," he added, with a sort of
ferocious discretion, right into Mr Verloc's face.

"Don't you try to come over me with your Hyperborean manners," Mr Verloc
defended himself huskily, looking at the carpet.  At this his
interlocutor, smiling mockingly above the bristling bow of his necktie,
switched the conversation into French.

"You give yourself for an 'agent provocateur.'  The proper business of an
'agent provocateur' is to provoke.  As far as I can judge from your
record kept here, you have done nothing to earn your money for the last
three years."

"Nothing!" exclaimed Verloc, stirring not a limb, and not raising his
eyes, but with the note of sincere feeling in his tone.  "I have several
times prevented what might have been--"

"There is a proverb in this country which says prevention is better than
cure," interrupted Mr Vladimir, throwing himself into the arm-chair.  "It
is stupid in a general way.  There is no end to prevention.  But it is
characteristic.  They dislike finality in this country.  Don't you be too
English.  And in this particular instance, don't be absurd.  The evil is
already here.  We don't want prevention--we want cure."

He paused, turned to the desk, and turning over some papers lying there,
spoke in a changed business-like tone, without looking at Mr Verloc.

"You know, of course, of the International Conference assembled in
Milan?"

Mr Verloc intimated hoarsely that he was in the habit of reading the
daily papers.  To a further question his answer was that, of course, he
understood what he read.  At this Mr Vladimir, smiling faintly at the
documents he was still scanning one after another, murmured "As long as
it is not written in Latin, I suppose."

"Or Chinese," added Mr Verloc stolidly.

"H'm.  Some of your revolutionary friends' effusions are written in a
_charabia_ every bit as incomprehensible as Chinese--"  Mr Vladimir let
fall disdainfully a grey sheet of printed matter.  "What are all these
leaflets headed F. P., with a hammer, pen, and torch crossed?  What does
it mean, this F. P.?"  Mr Verloc approached the imposing writing-table.

"The Future of the Proletariat.  It's a society," he explained, standing
ponderously by the side of the arm-chair, "not anarchist in principle,
but open to all shades of revolutionary opinion."

"Are you in it?"

"One of the Vice-Presidents," Mr Verloc breathed out heavily; and the
First Secretary of the Embassy raised his head to look at him.

"Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself," he said incisively.  "Isn't
your society capable of anything else but printing this prophetic bosh in
blunt type on this filthy paper eh?  Why don't you do something?  Look
here.  I've this matter in hand now, and I tell you plainly that you will
have to earn your money.  The good old Stott-Wartenheim times are over.
No work, no pay."

Mr Verloc felt a queer sensation of faintness in his stout legs.  He
stepped back one pace, and blew his nose loudly.

He was, in truth, startled and alarmed.  The rusty London sunshine
struggling clear of the London mist shed a lukewarm brightness into the
First Secretary's private room; and in the silence Mr Verloc heard
against a window-pane the faint buzzing of a fly--his first fly of the
year--heralding better than any number of swallows the approach of
spring.  The useless fussing of that tiny energetic organism affected
unpleasantly this big man threatened in his indolence.

In the pause Mr Vladimir formulated in his mind a series of disparaging
remarks concerning Mr Verloc's face and figure.  The fellow was
unexpectedly vulgar, heavy, and impudently unintelligent.  He looked
uncommonly like a master plumber come to present his bill.  The First
Secretary of the Embassy, from his occasional excursions into the field
of American humour, had formed a special notion of that class of mechanic
as the embodiment of fraudulent laziness and incompetency.

This was then the famous and trusty secret agent, so secret that he was
never designated otherwise but by the symbol [delta] in the late Baron
Stott-Wartenheim's official, semi-official, and confidential
correspondence; the celebrated agent [delta], whose warnings had the
power to change the schemes and the dates of royal, imperial, grand ducal
journeys, and sometimes caused them to be put off altogether!  This
fellow!  And Mr Vladimir indulged mentally in an enormous and derisive
fit of merriment, partly at his own astonishment, which he judged naive,
but mostly at the expense of the universally regretted Baron
Stott-Wartenheim.  His late Excellency, whom the august favour of his
Imperial master had imposed as Ambassador upon several reluctant
Ministers of Foreign Affairs, had enjoyed in his lifetime a fame for an
owlish, pessimistic gullibility.  His Excellency had the social
revolution on the brain.  He imagined himself to be a diplomatist set
apart by a special dispensation to watch the end of diplomacy, and pretty
nearly the end of the world, in a horrid democratic upheaval.  His
prophetic and doleful despatches had been for years the joke of Foreign
Offices.  He was said to have exclaimed on his deathbed (visited by his
Imperial friend and master): "Unhappy Europe!  Thou shalt perish by the
moral insanity of thy children!"  He was fated to be the victim of the
first humbugging rascal that came along, thought Mr Vladimir, smiling
vaguely at Mr Verloc.

"You ought to venerate the memory of Baron Stott-Wartenheim," he
exclaimed suddenly.

The lowered physiognomy of Mr Verloc expressed a sombre and weary
annoyance.

"Permit me to observe to you," he said, "that I came here because I was
summoned by a peremptory letter.  I have been here only twice before in
the last eleven years, and certainly never at eleven in the morning.  It
isn't very wise to call me up like this.  There is just a chance of being
seen.  And that would be no joke for me."

Mr Vladimir shrugged his shoulders.

"It would destroy my usefulness," continued the other hotly.

"That's your affair," murmured Mr Vladimir, with soft brutality.  "When
you cease to be useful you shall cease to be employed.  Yes.  Right off.
Cut short.  You shall--" Mr Vladimir, frowning, paused, at a loss for a
sufficiently idiomatic expression, and instantly brightened up, with a
grin of beautifully white teeth.  "You shall be chucked," he brought out
ferociously.

Once more Mr Verloc had to react with all the force of his will against
that sensation of faintness running down one's legs which once upon a
time had inspired some poor devil with the felicitous expression: "My
heart went down into my boots."  Mr Verloc, aware of the sensation,
raised his head bravely.

Mr Vladimir bore the look of heavy inquiry with perfect serenity.

"What we want is to administer a tonic to the Conference in Milan," he
said airily.  "Its deliberations upon international action for the
suppression of political crime don't seem to get anywhere.  England lags.
This country is absurd with its sentimental regard for individual
liberty.  It's intolerable to think that all your friends have got only
to come over to--"

"In that way I have them all under my eye," Mr Verloc interrupted
huskily.

"It would be much more to the point to have them all under lock and key.
England must be brought into line.  The imbecile bourgeoisie of this
country make themselves the accomplices of the very people whose aim is
to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches.  And they have
the political power still, if they only had the sense to use it for their
preservation.  I suppose you agree that the middle classes are stupid?"

Mr Verloc agreed hoarsely.

"They are."

"They have no imagination.  They are blinded by an idiotic vanity.  What
they want just now is a jolly good scare.  This is the psychological
moment to set your friends to work.  I have had you called here to
develop to you my idea."

And Mr Vladimir developed his idea from on high, with scorn and
condescension, displaying at the same time an amount of ignorance as to
the real aims, thoughts, and methods of the revolutionary world which
filled the silent Mr Verloc with inward consternation.  He confounded
causes with effects more than was excusable; the most distinguished
propagandists with impulsive bomb throwers; assumed organisation where in
the nature of things it could not exist; spoke of the social
revolutionary party one moment as of a perfectly disciplined army, where
the word of chiefs was supreme, and at another as if it had been the
loosest association of desperate brigands that ever camped in a mountain
gorge.  Once Mr Verloc had opened his mouth for a protest, but the
raising of a shapely, large white hand arrested him.  Very soon he became
too appalled to even try to protest.  He listened in a stillness of dread
which resembled the immobility of profound attention.

"A series of outrages," Mr Vladimir continued calmly, "executed here in
this country; not only _planned_ here--that would not do--they would not
mind.  Your friends could set half the Continent on fire without
influencing the public opinion here in favour of a universal repressive
legislation.  They will not look outside their backyard here."

Mr Verloc cleared his throat, but his heart failed him, and he said
nothing.

"These outrages need not be especially sanguinary," Mr Vladimir went on,
as if delivering a scientific lecture, "but they must be sufficiently
startling--effective.  Let them be directed against buildings, for
instance.  What is the fetish of the hour that all the bourgeoisie
recognise--eh, Mr Verloc?"

Mr Verloc opened his hands and shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"You are too lazy to think," was Mr Vladimir's comment upon that gesture.
"Pay attention to what I say.  The fetish of to-day is neither royalty
nor religion.  Therefore the palace and the church should be left alone.
You understand what I mean, Mr Verloc?"

The dismay and the scorn of Mr Verloc found vent in an attempt at levity.

"Perfectly.  But what of the Embassies?  A series of attacks on the
various Embassies," he began; but he could not withstand the cold,
watchful stare of the First Secretary.

"You can be facetious, I see," the latter observed carelessly.  "That's
all right.  It may enliven your oratory at socialistic congresses.  But
this room is no place for it.  It would be infinitely safer for you to
follow carefully what I am saying.  As you are being called upon to
furnish facts instead of cock-and-bull stories, you had better try to
make your profit off what I am taking the trouble to explain to you.  The
sacrosanct fetish of to-day is science.  Why don't you get some of your
friends to go for that wooden-faced panjandrum--eh?  Is it not part of
these institutions which must be swept away before the F. P. comes
along?"

Mr Verloc said nothing.  He was afraid to open his lips lest a groan
should escape him.

"This is what you should try for.  An attempt upon a crowned head or on a
president is sensational enough in a way, but not so much as it used to
be.  It has entered into the general conception of the existence of all
chiefs of state.  It's almost conventional--especially since so many
presidents have been assassinated.  Now let us take an outrage upon--say
a church.  Horrible enough at first sight, no doubt, and yet not so
effective as a person of an ordinary mind might think.  No matter how
revolutionary and anarchist in inception, there would be fools enough to
give such an outrage the character of a religious manifestation.  And
that would detract from the especial alarming significance we wish to
give to the act.  A murderous attempt on a restaurant or a theatre would
suffer in the same way from the suggestion of non-political passion: the
exasperation of a hungry man, an act of social revenge.  All this is used
up; it is no longer instructive as an object lesson in revolutionary
anarchism.  Every newspaper has ready-made phrases to explain such
manifestations away.  I am about to give you the philosophy of bomb
throwing from my point of view; from the point of view you pretend to
have been serving for the last eleven years.  I will try not to talk
above your head.  The sensibilities of the class you are attacking are
soon blunted.  Property seems to them an indestructible thing.  You can't
count upon their emotions either of pity or fear for very long.  A bomb
outrage to have any influence on public opinion now must go beyond the
intention of vengeance or terrorism.  It must be purely destructive.  It
must be that, and only that, beyond the faintest suspicion of any other
object.  You anarchists should make it clear that you are perfectly
determined to make a clean sweep of the whole social creation.  But how
to get that appallingly absurd notion into the heads of the middle
classes so that there should be no mistake?  That's the question.  By
directing your blows at something outside the ordinary passions of
humanity is the answer.  Of course, there is art.  A bomb in the National
Gallery would make some noise.  But it would not be serious enough.  Art
has never been their fetish.  It's like breaking a few back windows in a
man's house; whereas, if you want to make him really sit up, you must try
at least to raise the roof.  There would be some screaming of course, but
from whom?  Artists--art critics and such like--people of no account.
Nobody minds what they say.  But there is learning--science.  Any
imbecile that has got an income believes in that.  He does not know why,
but he believes it matters somehow.  It is the sacrosanct fetish.  All
the damned professors are radicals at heart.  Let them know that their
great panjandrum has got to go too, to make room for the Future of the
Proletariat.  A howl from all these intellectual idiots is bound to help
forward the labours of the Milan Conference.  They will be writing to the
papers.  Their indignation would be above suspicion, no material
interests being openly at stake, and it will alarm every selfishness of
the class which should be impressed.  They believe that in some
mysterious way science is at the source of their material prosperity.
They do.  And the absurd ferocity of such a demonstration will affect
them more profoundly than the mangling of a whole street--or
theatre--full of their own kind.  To that last they can always say: 'Oh!
it's mere class hate.'  But what is one to say to an act of destructive
ferocity so absurd as to be incomprehensible, inexplicable, almost
unthinkable; in fact, mad?  Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch
as you cannot placate it either by threats, persuasion, or bribes.
Moreover, I am a civilised man.  I would never dream of directing you to
organise a mere butchery, even if I expected the best results from it.
But I wouldn't expect from a butchery the result I want.  Murder is
always with us.  It is almost an institution.  The demonstration must be
against learning--science.  But not every science will do.  The attack
must have all the shocking senselessness of gratuitous blasphemy.  Since
bombs are your means of expression, it would be really telling if one
could throw a bomb into pure mathematics.  But that is impossible.  I
have been trying to educate you; I have expounded to you the higher
philosophy of your usefulness, and suggested to you some serviceable
arguments.  The practical application of my teaching interests _you_
mostly.  But from the moment I have undertaken to interview you I have
also given some attention to the practical aspect of the question.  What
do you think of having a go at astronomy?"

For sometime already Mr Verloc's immobility by the side of the arm-chair
resembled a state of collapsed coma--a sort of passive insensibility
interrupted by slight convulsive starts, such as may be observed in the
domestic dog having a nightmare on the hearthrug.  And it was in an
uneasy doglike growl that he repeated the word:

"Astronomy."

He had not recovered thoroughly as yet from that state of bewilderment
brought about by the effort to follow Mr Vladimir's rapid incisive
utterance.  It had overcome his power of assimilation.  It had made him
angry.  This anger was complicated by incredulity.  And suddenly it
dawned upon him that all this was an elaborate joke.  Mr Vladimir
exhibited his white teeth in a smile, with dimples on his round, full
face posed with a complacent inclination above the bristling bow of his
neck-tie.  The favourite of intelligent society women had assumed his
drawing-room attitude accompanying the delivery of delicate witticisms.
Sitting well forward, his white hand upraised, he seemed to hold
delicately between his thumb and forefinger the subtlety of his
suggestion.

"There could be nothing better.  Such an outrage combines the greatest
possible regard for humanity with the most alarming display of ferocious
imbecility.  I defy the ingenuity of journalists to persuade their public
that any given member of the proletariat can have a personal grievance
against astronomy.  Starvation itself could hardly be dragged in
there--eh?  And there are other advantages.  The whole civilised world
has heard of Greenwich.  The very boot-blacks in the basement of Charing
Cross Station know something of it.  See?"

The features of Mr Vladimir, so well known in the best society by their
humorous urbanity, beamed with cynical self-satisfaction, which would
have astonished the intelligent women his wit entertained so exquisitely.
"Yes," he continued, with a contemptuous smile, "the blowing up of the
first meridian is bound to raise a howl of execration."

"A difficult business," Mr Verloc mumbled, feeling that this was the only
safe thing to say.

"What is the matter?  Haven't you the whole gang under your hand?  The
very pick of the basket?  That old terrorist Yundt is here.  I see him
walking about Piccadilly in his green havelock almost every day.  And
Michaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle--you don't mean to say you don't
know where he is?  Because if you don't, I can tell you," Mr Vladimir
went on menacingly.  "If you imagine that you are the only one on the
secret fund list, you are mistaken."

This perfectly gratuitous suggestion caused Mr Verloc to shuffle his feet
slightly.

"And the whole Lausanne lot--eh?  Haven't they been flocking over here at
the first hint of the Milan Conference?  This is an absurd country."

"It will cost money," Mr Verloc said, by a sort of instinct.

"That cock won't fight," Mr Vladimir retorted, with an amazingly genuine
English accent.  "You'll get your screw every month, and no more till
something happens.  And if nothing happens very soon you won't get even
that.  What's your ostensible occupation?  What are you supposed to live
by?"

"I keep a shop," answered Mr Verloc.

"A shop!  What sort of shop?"

"Stationery, newspapers.  My wife--"

"Your what?" interrupted Mr Vladimir in his guttural Central Asian tones.

"My wife."  Mr Verloc raised his husky voice slightly.  "I am married."

"That be damned for a yarn," exclaimed the other in unfeigned
astonishment.  "Married!  And you a professed anarchist, too!  What is
this confounded nonsense?  But I suppose it's merely a manner of
speaking.  Anarchists don't marry.  It's well known.  They can't.  It
would be apostasy."

"My wife isn't one," Mr Verloc mumbled sulkily.  "Moreover, it's no
concern of yours."

"Oh yes, it is," snapped Mr Vladimir.  "I am beginning to be convinced
that you are not at all the man for the work you've been employed on.
Why, you must have discredited yourself completely in your own world by
your marriage.  Couldn't you have managed without?  This is your virtuous
attachment--eh?  What with one sort of attachment and another you are
doing away with your usefulness."

Mr Verloc, puffing out his cheeks, let the air escape violently, and that
was all.  He had armed himself with patience.  It was not to be tried
much longer.  The First Secretary became suddenly very curt, detached,
final.

"You may go now," he said.  "A dynamite outrage must be provoked.  I give
you a month.  The sittings of the Conference are suspended.  Before it
reassembles again something must have happened here, or your connection
with us ceases."

He changed the note once more with an unprincipled versatility.

"Think over my philosophy, Mr--Mr--Verloc," he said, with a sort of
chaffing condescension, waving his hand towards the door.  "Go for the
first meridian.  You don't know the middle classes as well as I do.
Their sensibilities are jaded.  The first meridian.  Nothing better, and
nothing easier, I should think."

He had got up, and with his thin sensitive lips twitching humorously,
watched in the glass over the mantelpiece Mr Verloc backing out of the
room heavily, hat and stick in hand.  The door closed.

The footman in trousers, appearing suddenly in the corridor, let Mr
Verloc another way out and through a small door in the corner of the
courtyard.  The porter standing at the gate ignored his exit completely;
and Mr Verloc retraced the path of his morning's pilgrimage as if in a
dream--an angry dream.  This detachment from the material world was so
complete that, though the mortal envelope of Mr Verloc had not hastened
unduly along the streets, that part of him to which it would be
unwarrantably rude to refuse immortality, found itself at the shop door
all at once, as if borne from west to east on the wings of a great wind.
He walked straight behind the counter, and sat down on a wooden chair
that stood there.  No one appeared to disturb his solitude.  Stevie, put
into a green baize apron, was now sweeping and dusting upstairs, intent
and conscientious, as though he were playing at it; and Mrs Verloc,
warned in the kitchen by the clatter of the cracked bell, had merely come
to the glazed door of the parlour, and putting the curtain aside a
little, had peered into the dim shop.  Seeing her husband sitting there
shadowy and bulky, with his hat tilted far back on his head, she had at
once returned to her stove.  An hour or more later she took the green
baize apron off her brother Stevie, and instructed him to wash his hands
and face in the peremptory tone she had used in that connection for
fifteen years or so--ever since she had, in fact, ceased to attend to the
boy's hands and face herself.  She spared presently a glance away from
her dishing-up for the inspection of that face and those hands which
Stevie, approaching the kitchen table, offered for her approval with an
air of self-assurance hiding a perpetual residue of anxiety.  Formerly
the anger of the father was the supremely effective sanction of these
rites, but Mr Verloc's placidity in domestic life would have made all
mention of anger incredible even to poor Stevie's nervousness.  The
theory was that Mr Verloc would have been inexpressibly pained and
shocked by any deficiency of cleanliness at meal times.  Winnie after the
death of her father found considerable consolation in the feeling that
she need no longer tremble for poor Stevie.  She could not bear to see
the boy hurt.  It maddened her.  As a little girl she had often faced
with blazing eyes the irascible licensed victualler in defence of her
brother.  Nothing now in Mrs Verloc's appearance could lead one to
suppose that she was capable of a passionate demonstration.

She finished her dishing-up.  The table was laid in the parlour.  Going
to the foot of the stairs, she screamed out "Mother!"  Then opening the
glazed door leading to the shop, she said quietly "Adolf!"  Mr Verloc had
not changed his position; he had not apparently stirred a limb for an
hour and a half.  He got up heavily, and came to his dinner in his
overcoat and with his hat on, without uttering a word.  His silence in
itself had nothing startlingly unusual in this household, hidden in the
shades of the sordid street seldom touched by the sun, behind the dim
shop with its wares of disreputable rubbish.  Only that day Mr Verloc's
taciturnity was so obviously thoughtful that the two women were impressed
by it.  They sat silent themselves, keeping a watchful eye on poor
Stevie, lest he should break out into one of his fits of loquacity.  He
faced Mr Verloc across the table, and remained very good and quiet,
staring vacantly.  The endeavour to keep him from making himself
objectionable in any way to the master of the house put no inconsiderable
anxiety into these two women's lives.  "That boy," as they alluded to him
softly between themselves, had been a source of that sort of anxiety
almost from the very day of his birth.  The late licensed victualler's
humiliation at having such a very peculiar boy for a son manifested
itself by a propensity to brutal treatment; for he was a person of fine
sensibilities, and his sufferings as a man and a father were perfectly
genuine.  Afterwards Stevie had to be kept from making himself a nuisance
to the single gentlemen lodgers, who are themselves a queer lot, and are
easily aggrieved.  And there was always the anxiety of his mere existence
to face.  Visions of a workhouse infirmary for her child had haunted the
old woman in the basement breakfast-room of the decayed Belgravian house.
"If you had not found such a good husband, my dear," she used to say to
her daughter, "I don't know what would have become of that poor boy."

Mr Verloc extended as much recognition to Stevie as a man not
particularly fond of animals may give to his wife's beloved cat; and this
recognition, benevolent and perfunctory, was essentially of the same
quality.  Both women admitted to themselves that not much more could be
reasonably expected.  It was enough to earn for Mr Verloc the old woman's
reverential gratitude.  In the early days, made sceptical by the trials
of friendless life, she used sometimes to ask anxiously: "You don't
think, my dear, that Mr Verloc is getting tired of seeing Stevie about?"
To this Winnie replied habitually by a slight toss of her head.  Once,
however, she retorted, with a rather grim pertness: "He'll have to get
tired of me first."  A long silence ensued.  The mother, with her feet
propped up on a stool, seemed to be trying to get to the bottom of that
answer, whose feminine profundity had struck her all of a heap.  She had
never really understood why Winnie had married Mr Verloc.  It was very
sensible of her, and evidently had turned out for the best, but her girl
might have naturally hoped to find somebody of a more suitable age.
There had been a steady young fellow, only son of a butcher in the next
street, helping his father in business, with whom Winnie had been walking
out with obvious gusto.  He was dependent on his father, it is true; but
the business was good, and his prospects excellent.  He took her girl to
the theatre on several evenings.  Then just as she began to dread to hear
of their engagement (for what could she have done with that big house
alone, with Stevie on her hands), that romance came to an abrupt end, and
Winnie went about looking very dull.  But Mr Verloc, turning up
providentially to occupy the first-floor front bedroom, there had been no
more question of the young butcher.  It was clearly providential.

 Now that the first chapter has described the Verloc household, the book returns to the opening line of the novel and reminds us that Mr. Verloc is leaving his home/shop in Stevie's care at half-past ten in the morning. The narrator mentions that the sun is "a peculiarly London sun--against nothing could be said except it looked bloodshot" . Get used to this atmosphere, because a bloodshot sun is probably the cheeriest weather Conrad describes in the entire book. Mr. Verloc looks over the things around him with "an approving eye" . He believes that "all these people to be protected" . He appreciates the fact that all of them are pretty rich, and firmly believes that the most important thing for wealthy people is that they are protected and safe. More specifically, he believes that these people's property needs to be protected against the "shallow enviousness of unhygienic labour" . In a move that was very common in Conrad's time, Verloc draws a clear line between working-class and middle-class people. He loves the middle and upper classes, who are clean and rich, and he hates the working class, who are dirty and envious of the rich folks. The narrator just decides to go ahead and tell us that Mr. Verloc is a pretty lazy dude, which you could probably already tell from the fact that he never gets out of bed before 10 a.m. His parents were very hard-working people, but he has embraced laziness for reasons that the narrator can't really explain to us. Judging by Verloc's weight and nice clothes, people might think he is a lower-level businessman, but the narrator tells us that Verloc gives off a vibe that's "common to men who live on the vices, the follies, or the baser fears of mankind" . In this instance, the narrator suggests that you can almost tell by looking that Verloc has made his money off the worst parts of people's personalities. We learn that the reason Mr. Verloc has gotten all dressed up is because he has business with an embassy. He turns onto a private street where the numbers on the houses stop making sense. He passes No. 1 Chesham Square even though "Chesham Square at least sixty blocks away" . He comes to a gate marked with the number 10, which joins two houses: one marked 9 Chesham Square and the other marked 37 Porthill Street. Obviously, the houses are not marked in any logical way, and this detail helps Conrad convey an overall sense of uncertainty and randomness in the maze-like streets of London. Mr. Verloc doesn't worry too much about this lack of order, though. Inside the embassy, Verloc is led to a waiting room, where he is eventually met by Privy Councilor Wurmt --a bald, shortsighted man who doesn't seem all that happy about having to deal with Verloc. Wurmt lays down some reports that Verloc has written and tells Verloc that he's not happy about the way the London police have been treating the political radicals in London . Wurmt is convinced that the niceness of London police has made England a joke to the rest of Europe. Both Wurmt and Verloc agree that there is social unrest in England, and Verloc reminds Wurmt that he's been trying to document this unrest in his reports for the past twelve months. Out of nowhere, Wurmt tells Verloc that he is really fat, maybe suggesting that Verloc has been sitting around and eating up a government paycheck while being lazy. Verloc is hurt by the comment and tries to stand up for himself. But Wurmt gets too fed up with him and leaves, saying that Verloc should meet with a guy named Mr. Vladimir. A bit later, a servant in brown leads Verloc out of the room. Mr. Verloc enters a large room with three windows. Sitting in a big armchair behind a writing table is a "young man with a shaven, big face" . The guy's name is Mr. Vladimir, and he has a reputation for being really popular in London's high society because of his wit and charm. With Verloc, though, he's all business. After they speak for a few moments in French, Vladimir suddenly shifts into English without the slightest trace of an accent. This shows that Vladimir knows the spy game well, and is an expert at shifting his cultural identity without detection. You learn from the following conversation that Verloc's first gig working for the English government was obtaining the plans for a new French gun. He was caught doing this and put into a high-security French jail for five years. He'd like to get a little credit for his sacrifice, but Vladimir just calls him a loser for getting caught. Vladimir slams Verloc for being too fat to pass himself off as an anarchist, since anarchists are supposed to be poor and starving. At this point, a few threads come together, and you realize that Verloc is a government agent who's been hired to spy on anarchists and anarchist groups in London. Vladimir goes on to tell Verloc that his former boss was a crazy old man, and that Verloc is going to have to start producing concrete results in his work or stop picking up a government check. Verloc starts shouting at Vladimir, showing off the great booming voice that's made him super popular at left-wing rallies. Mr. Verloc says his work is constantly preventing attacks in London, but Vladimir tells him that he's not interested in prevention. What he wants is for the police to start whomping people they don't like the look of, which can't happen unless some radical commits an act of destruction. Vladimir then tells Verloc that there is an international conference coming up in Milan, and that he wants something to happen in London before this conference to set the governments of Europe cracking down on left-wing radicals. Verloc feels that his own lazy lifestyle is being threatened, and can't stand the idea of having to actually do something to earn the money he makes. Morally, he doesn't care one way or the other about an attack in London. Mr. Vladimir adds that he's not all that interested in killing a bunch of people, but this is only because people have gotten too used to the idea of murder in London. Vladimir wants the attack to have a great effect on people's minds, so it has to have symbolic significance. Vladimir then goes on to reason why it won't matter if Verloc attacks royalty or the church, since people might think that the attack was the effort of a crazy individual, and not part of some larger threat. Vladimir says that Verloc has to attack science, since during Conrad's time science was everyone's favorite flavor of the month. Finally, Vladimir gets down to talking turkey, and says he wants a political radical to attack an observatory in the neighborhood of Greenwich. The location of this observatory is at "the first meridian," which today is still the standard for clock-time around the globe. Vladimir is convinced that such an attack on the very idea of scientific reason will produce enough fear in London to lead to some really harsh laws. Verloc argues that the plan will cost money, but Vladimir throws this comment back in his face and says Verloc won't be getting any more government cheese unless he starts producing results quickly. Vladimir gives Verloc a month to bomb the Greenwich observatory, and Verloc walks home in a fog, wondering what he's going to do. The chapter concludes with his wife Winnie glancing through the curtain that leads between the Verloc's home and the shop, where she sees Verloc sitting and thinking on a chair behind the cash counter. This sight is followed by a brief history of how Winnie has always considered herself lucky to have Verloc for a husband, since he tolerates her brother Stevie like a housecat, which is the best she can hope for. We also learn that when Winnie was younger, she went on a few dates with a butcher's son, who she really seemed to like-like. But one day, without warning, Winnie came home depressed and stopped seeing the boy. A short while later, she met and agreed to marry Mr. Verloc, who was much older than her, but was a good provider for Winnie, her mother, and Stevie. Winnie's mother has always counted this turn of events as a stroke of incredibly good luck, something "clearly providential" .

