The Slave of the Lamp | Page 7

and he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. "I am not afraid of them. There is only one thing to be feared, Citizen Jacquetot--the press. The press and the people, bien entendu."
"If you despise the people why do you use them?" asked Jacquetot abruptly.
"In default of better, my friend. If one has not steam one uses the river to turn the mill-wheel. The river is slow; sometimes it is too weak, sometimes too strong. One never has full control over it, but it turns the wheel--it turns the wheel, brother Jacquetot."
"And eventually sweeps away the miller," suggested the tobacconist lightly. It must be remembered that though stout he was intelligent. Had he not been so it is probable that this conversation would never have taken place. The dark-eyed man did not look like one who would have the patience to deal with stupid people.
Again the pleasant smile flickered like the light of a fire in a dark place.
"That," was the reply, "is the affair of the miller."
"But," conceded Jacquetot, meditatively selecting a new cigar from a box which he had reached without moving from his chair, "but the people--they are fools, hein!"
"Ah!" with a protesting shrug, as if deprecating the enunciation of such a platitude.
Then he passed through into a little room behind the shop--a little room where no daylight penetrated, because there was no window to it. It depended for daylight upon the shop, with which it communicated by a door of which the upper half was glass. But this glass was thickly curtained with the material called Turkey-red, threefold.
And the tobacconist was left alone in his shop, smoking gravely. There are some people like oysters, inasmuch as they leave an after-taste behind them. The man who had just gone into the little room at the rear of the tobacconist's shop of the Rue St. Gingolphe in Paris was one of these. And the taste he left behind him was rather disquieting. One was apt to feel that there was a mistake somewhere in the ordering of human affairs, and that this man was one of its victims.
In a few minutes two men passed hastily through the shop into the little room, with scarcely so much as a nod for Mr. Jacquetot.
CHAPTER II
TOOLS
The first man to enter the room was clad in a blouse of coarse grey cloth which reached down to his knees. On his head he wore a black silk cap, very much pressed down and exceedingly greasy on the right side. This was to be accounted for by the fact that he used his right shoulder more than the left in that state of life in which he had been placed. It was not what we, who do not kill, would consider a pleasant state. He was, in fact, a slayer of beasts--a foreman at the slaughter-house.
It is, perhaps, fortunate that Antoine Lerac is of no great prominence in this record, and of none in his official capacity at the slaughter-house. But the man is worthy of some small attention, because he was so essentially of the nineteenth century--so distinctly a product of the latter end of what is, for us at least, the most important cycle of years the world has passed through. He was a man wearing the blouse with ostentation, and glorying in the greasy cap: professing his unwillingness to exchange the one for an ermine robe or the other for a crown. As a matter of fact, he invariably purchased the largest and roughest blouse to be found, and his cap was unnecessarily soaked with suet. He was a knight of industry of the very worst description--a braggart, a talker, a windbag. He preached, or rather he shrieked, the doctrine of equality, but the equality he sought was that which would place him on a par with his superiors, while in no way benefiting those beneath him.
At one time, when he had first come into contact with the dark-eyed man who now sat at the table watching him curiously, there had been a struggle for mastery.
"I am," he had said with considerable heat, "as good as you. That is all I wish to demonstrate."
"No," replied the other with that calm and assured air of superiority which the people once tried in vain to stamp out with the guillotine. "No, it is not. You want to demonstrate that you are superior, and you cannot do it. You say that you have as much right to walk on the pavement as I. I admit it. In your heart you want to prove that you have more, and you cannot do it. I could wear your blouse with comfort, but you could not put on my hat or my gloves without making yourself ridiculous. But--that is not the question. Let us get to business."
And in time the