They flew past St. James's Park with the speed of dream, the bare black branches of the lime-trees flashing by like wind-driven smoke. The driver wore leather goggles with round lenses, and plainly relished their headlong flight, periodically sounding a deep-throated whistle that sent horses rearing and pedestrians scurrying. The stoker, a burly young Irishman, was grinning maniacally as he shoveled coke into the burner.
   Oliphant had no idea of their destination. Now, as they neared Trafalgar, the traffic caused the driver to yank the whistle-cord continually, steadily, setting up a mournful bellowing ululation, like the grief of some marine behemoth. The traffic, at this sound, parted like the Red Sea before Moses. Helmeted policemen saluted smartly as they sped past. Urchins and crossing-sweepers turned cartwheels of delight, at the sight of a sleek tin fish racketing down the Strand.
   The evening had grown quite dark. As they entered Fleet Street, the driver applied the brake and worked a lever that released a mighty gout of uprushing steam. The line-streamed gurney bumped to a halt.
   "Well, sir," the driver commented, raising his goggles to peer through the fretted glass of the vehicle's prow, "would you look at that."
   Traffic, Oliphant saw, had been halted completely by the erection of wooden barricades hung with lanterns. Behind these stood grim-faced soldiers in combat drab, Cutts-Maudslay carbines unslung and at the ready. Beyond them, he saw sheets of canvas, loosely hung from raw timber uprights, as though someone were attempting to erect stage-scenery in the middle of Fleet Street.
   The stoker swabbed his face with a polka-dot kingsman. "Something here the press aren't meant to see."
   "They've put it in the wrong street, then," the driver said, "haven't they?"
   As Oliphant climbed from the gurney, Fraser came walking quickly toward him. "We've found her," Fraser said glumly.
   "And seem to have attracted considerable publicity in the process. Perhaps a few less infantry would be in order?"
   "It isn't a matter for levity, Mr. Oliphant. You'd best come with me."
   "Is Betteredge here?"
   "Haven't seen him. This way, please." Fraser led the way between a pair of barricades. A soldier curtly nodded them past.
   Oliphant glimpsed a mustachioed gentleman in urgent conversation with two Metropolitans. "That's Halliday," he said, "chief of Criminal Anthropometry."
   "Yes, sir," Fraser said. "They're all over this one. The Museum of Practical Geology has been broken into. The Royal Society is angry as a nest of hornets, and bloody Egremont will be in every first-edition, calling it a Luddite outrage. Our only bit of luck would seem to be that Dr. Mallory is well away in China."
   "Mallory? Why is that?"
   "The Land Leviathan. Mrs. Bartlett and her cohorts attempted to make away with the thing's skull."
   They rounded one of the makeshift barriers, its coarse fabric stamped at intervals with the broad-arrow mark of the Army Ordnance Department.
   A cab-horse lay on its side in a great pool of darkening blood. The cab, a common one-horse fly, was overturned nearby, its dull black-lacquered panels stitched with bullet-holes.
   "She was with two men," Fraser said. "Three if you count a corpse they left behind in the Museum. The hack was driven by a Yankee exile called Russell, a bully-rock bruiser living in Seven Dials. The other man was Henry Dease of Liverpool, quite the accomplished cracksman. I'd our Henry in dock ten times, when I was on the force, but no more. They're laid out there, sir." He pointed. "Russell, the driver, evidently got into a shouting match with a real cabman, over who should give way. A Metropolitan on traffic-duty attempted to intervene, at which point Russell produced a pistol."
   Oliphant was staring at the overturned cab.
   "The traffic officer was unarmed, but a pair of Bow Street detectives happened to be passing… "
   "But this cab, Fraser…"
   "That's the work of an Army-gurney, sir. The last of the temporary garrisons is just by the Holborn viaduct." He paused. "Dease had a Russian shotgun… "
   Oliphant shook his head in disbelief.
   "Eight civilians taken to hospital," Fraser said. "One detective dead. But come along, sir—best we get this done with."
   "What is the meaning of these canvas screens?"
   "Criminal Anthropometry ordered them."
   Oliphant felt as though he were moving through a dream, his limbs numb and without volition. He allowed himself to be led to where three canvas-draped bodies were arranged upon stretchers.
   The face of Florence Bartlett was a hideous ruin.
   "Vitriol," Fraser said. "A bullet shattered whatever container she employed."
   Oliphant turned quickly away, retching into his handkerchief.
   "Sorry, sir," Fraser said. "No point in you seeing the other two."
   "Betteredge, Fraser—have you seen him?"
   "No, sir. Here's the skull, sir, or what remains of it."
   "The skull?"
   Perhaps half-a-dozen massive fragments of petrified bone and ivory-tinted plaster were neatly arranged atop a varnished trestle-table. "There's a Mr. Reeks here, from the Museum, come to take it back," Fraser said. "Says it isn't as badly damaged as we might think. Would you like to sit down, sir? I could find you a folding-stool—"
   "No. Why does there seem to be fully half of Criminal Anthropometry about, Fraser?"
   "Well, sir, you're in a better position to determine that than I," Fraser said, lowering his voice, "though I've heard it said that Mr. Egremont and Lord Galton have recently discovered they've much in common."
   "Lord Galton? The eugenics theorist?"
   "Lord Darwin's cousin, that is. He's Anthropometry's man in the House of Lords. Has a deal of influence in the Royal Society." Fraser brought out his notebook. "You'd best see why I thought it urgent you come here, sir." He led Oliphant back around the ruin of the cab. Glancing about for possible observers, he passed Oliphant a fold of blue flimsy. "I took it from the Bartlett woman's reticule."
   The note was undated, unsigned:

   That which you so persistently desire has been located, albeit in a most peculiar hiding-place. I am informed, by our mutual acquaintance of the Derby, Dr. Mallory, that it has been sealed up within the skull of his Land Leviathan. I would hope that you will consider this crucial intelligence a full repayment of all my debts to you. I am in some peril now, from recent political developments, and certainly I am observed by elements of Government; pray consider that in any further attempt to communicate. I have done all that I can, I swear it.

   The elegant hand, as familiar to Oliphant as it was to Fraser, was Lady Ada Byron's.
   "The two of us alone have seen that," Fraser said.
   Oliphant folded the paper in quarters before putting it away in his cigar-case. "And what exactly was it, Fraser, that was hidden in the skull?"
   "I'll escort you back through the line, sir."
   Reporters surged forward as Fraser and Oliphant emerged from the barricades. Fraser took Oliphant's arm and led him into a cluster of helmeted Metropolitans, some of whom he greeted casually by name. "To answer your question, Mr. Oliphant," Fraser said, the policemen walling off the shouting crowd behind blue serge and brass buttons, "I don't know. But we have it."

   "You do? By whose authority?"
   "None but my own lights," Fraser said. "Harris here, he found it in the cab, before Anthropometry arrived." Fraser very nearly smiled. "The boys on the force aren't too keen on Anthropometry. Bloody-minded amateurs, aye, Harris?"
   "Aye, sir," said a Metropolitan with blond side-whiskers, "they are that."
   "Where is it, then?" Oliphant asked.
   "Here, sir." Harris produced a cheap black satchel. "Just as we found it, in this."
   "Mr. Oliphant, sir, I think you'd best take that straight away," Fraser said.
   "Indeed, Fraser, I agree. Tell the Special Branch chap in the fancy gurney that I won't be needing him. Thank you, Harris. Good evening." The policemen parted smoothly. Oliphant, satchel in hand, strode smartly out through the throng who jostled for a better view of the soldiers and the canvas screens.
   "Pardon, guv, but couldyer spare a copper?"
   Oliphant looked down into the squinting brown eyes of little Boots, every inch the crippled jockey. He was neither. Oliphant threw him a penny. Boots caught it adroitly, then edged forward on his cut-down crutch. He stank of damp fustian and smoked mackerel. "Trouble, guv. Becky'll tell yer." Boots wheeled about on his crutch and hobbled determinedly away, muttering as he went, a beggar intent upon finding a better pitch.
   He was one of Oliphant's two most talented watchers.
   The other, Becky Dean, kept pace beside Oliphant as he neared the corner of Chancery Lane. She was gotten up as a rather successful tart, brass-heeled and brazen.
   "Where has Betteredge got to?" Oliphant asked, as if talking to himself.
   "Taken," Becky Dean said. "Not three hours ago."
   "Taken by whom?"
   "Two men in a hack. They'd been following you. Betteredge got on to them, then set us to watching the watchers."
   "I knew nothing of this."
   "Day before yesterday, he came to us."
   "And who were these men?"
   "One's a greasy little ponce of a private detective. Velasco his name is. The other was Government by the look of him."
   "He was taken in broad daylight? By force?"
   "You know well enough how it's done," Becky Dean said.

   In the soothing reek of his tobacconist's quiet stock-room, at the corner of Chancery Lane and Carey Street, Oliphant held the corner of the blue flimsy above the concise jet of a bronze cigar-lighter in the shape of a turbaned Turk.
   He watched the paper reduce itself to delicate pinkish ash.
   The satchel had contained a Ballester-Molina automatic revolver, a silvered-brass pocket-flask filled with some sickly, sweet-scented decoction, and a wooden case. "This last was plainly the object in question, encrusted as it was with raw white plaster. It held a very large number of Engine-cards in the Napoleon gauge, cut from a novel material, milky and very smooth to the touch.
   "The parcel," he said to Mr. Beadon, the tobacconist, "is to be held for me alone."
   "Certainly, sir."
   "My man Bligh to be the sole exception."
   "As you wish, sir."
   "If any inquiry at all should be made, Beadon, please send a boy 'round to advise Bligh."
   "Our pleasure, sir."
   "Thank you, Beadon. Could you possibly give me forty pounds cash, against my account?"
   "Forty, sir?"
   "Yes."
   "Yes I could, sir. With pleasure, Mr. Oliphant." Mr. Beadon took a ring of keys from his coat and went to unlock an admirably modern-looking safe.
   "And a dozen prime habanas. And Beadon?"
   "Yes, sir?"
   "I think it might be a very good idea if you were to keep the parcel in your safe there."
   "Of course, sir."
   "I believe that the Lambs is nearby, Beadon, the dining-club?"
   "Yes, sir. Holborn, sir. A short walk."

   The year's first snow began to fall, as he made his way up Chancery Lane, a dry gritty stuff that seemed unlikely to adhere to the paving.
   Boots and Becky Dean were nowhere to be seen, which could reliably be taken to mean that they were about their customarily invisible business.
   You know well enough how it's done.
   And didn't he? How many had been made to vanish, vanish utterly, in London alone? How could one sit among friends at pleasant little dinners, sipping Moselle, listening to kind and careless talk, yet carry in one's mind the burden of such knowledge?
   He'd meant Collins to be the last, absolutely the last; now Betteredge had gone, and at the hands of another agency.
   In the beginning, it had made so horribly elegant a sort of sense.
   In the beginning, it had been his idea.
   The Eye. He sensed it now—yes, surely, its all-seeing gaze full upon him as he nodded to the tasseled doorman and entered the marbled vestibule of the Lambs, Andrew Wakefield's dining club.
   Brass letter-boxes, a telegraph-booth, an excess of French-polished veneer, all thoroughly modern. He glanced back, through glass doors, to the street. Opposite the Lambs, beyond twin streams of snow-dusted traffic, he glimpsed a solitary figure in a tall derby hat.
   A page directed him to the grill-room, which was done in dark oak, with an enormous fireplace topped with a mantel of carved Italian stone. "Laurence Oliphant," he told the tightly jacketed head-waiter, "for Mr. Andrew Wakefield."
   A look of unease crossed the man's face. "I'm sorry, sir, but he isn't—"
   "Thank you," Oliphant said, "but I believe I see Mr. Wakefield."
   With the head-waiter at his heels, Oliphant marched between the tables, diners turning as he passed.
   "Andrew," he said, arriving at Wakefield's table, "how very fortunate to find you here."
   Wakefield was dining alone. He seemed to experience a temporary difficulty in swallowing.

   "Mr. Wakefield, sir," the head-waiter began.
   "My friend will be joining me," Wakefield said. "Sit down, please. We're attracting attention."
   "Thank you." Oliphant took a seat.
   "Will you be dining, sir?" the head-waiter asked.
   "No, thank you."
   When they were alone, Wakefield sighed loudly. "Damn it all, Oliphant, but didn't I make my terms clear?"
   "What exactly is it, Andrew, of which you've become so frightened?"
   "It should be fairly obvious."
   "Should it?"
   "Lord Galton's in league with your bloody Mr. Egremont. He's the great patron of Criminal Anthropometry. Always has been. Their virtual founder. He's Charles Darwin's cousin, Oliphant, and he wields great influence in the House of Lords."
   "Yes, and in the Royal Society, and in the Geographical as well. I'm thoroughly familiar with Lord Galton, Andrew. He espouses the systematic breeding of the human species."
   Wakefield put down his knife and fork. "Criminal Anthropometry have effectively taken over the Bureau. For all intents and purposes, the Central Statistics Bureau is now under Egremont's control."
   Oliphant watched as Wakefield's upper teeth began to worry at his lower-lip.
   "I've just come from Fleet Street," Oliphant said. "The level of violence in this society"—and he drew the Ballester-Molina from within his coat—"or rather, I should say, the level of unacknowledged violence, has become remarkable, don't you think, Andrew?" He placed the revolver on the linen between them. "Take this pistol as an example. All too readily obtainable, I'm told. It is of Franco-Mexican manufacture, though the invention of Spaniards. Certain of its internal parts, I am informed, springs and whatnot, are actually British, available on the open market. It becomes rather difficult, then, to say where a weapon like this comes from. Emblematic of something in our current situation, don't you think?"
   Wakefield had gone quite white.
   "But I seem to have upset you, Andrew. I'm sorry."
   "They'll erase us," Wakefield said. "We'll cease to exist. There'll be nothing left, nothing to prove either of us ever lived. Not a check-stub, not a mortgage in a City bank, nothing whatever."
   "Exactly what I'm on about, Andrew."
   "Don't take that moral tone with me, sir," Wakefield said. "Your lot began it, Oliphant—the disappearances, the files gone missing, the names expunged, numbers lost, histories edited to suit specific ends… No, don't take that tone with me. "
   Oliphant could think of nothing to say. He rose, leaving the pistol on the table-cloth, and left the grill-room without looking back.
   "Pardon me," he said, in the marbled vestibule, to a burgundy-jacketed bellman who was sifting cigar-ends from a sand-filled marble um, "but could you please direct me to the office of the club steward?"
   "You bet," the bellman said, or some similar bit of American dialect, and led Oliphant smartly away, down a corridor lined with mirrors and rubber-plants.
   Fifty-five minutes later, having toured the club's premises at some length, having been shown a photographic album of the Lambs' annual "gambols," having applied for membership, and having paid a not inconsiderable initiation fee, nonrefundable, via his own number in the National Credit, Oliphant shook hands with the pomaded steward, gave the man a pound-note, and requested that he be let out by the club's most obscure trade-entrance.
   This proved to be a scullery-door which opened on exactly the sort of dank and narrow passage he had hoped for.
   Within a quarter-of-an-hour, he stood at the public bar of a crowded house in Bedford Road, reviewing the text of the telegram that one Sybil Gerard had once dispatched to Mr. Charles Egremont, M.P., of Belgravia.
   "Lost both me boys o' sickness in the Crimea, squire, an' innit allus the tele-gram comes—innit?"
   Oliphant folded the sheet of foolscap into his cigar-case. He watched his dim reflection in the polished zinc of the bar. He looked at his empty tumbler. He looked up at the woman, a raddled hairidan in rags gone a color that had no name, her cheeks roseate with gin-blossoms under a patina of grime.
   "No," he said, "that tragedy is not mine."
   "Me Roger it was," she said, " 'n' Tommy-lad too. An' not a rag come 'ome, squire—not a bloody rag… "
   He handed her a coin. She thanked him, mumbling, and retreated.
   He seemed to have thoroughly slipped the traces for the moment. He was entirely alone. It was time to find a cab.

   In the dim, high hollow of the great station a thousand voices seemed to mingle, the constituent elements of language reduced to the aural equivalent of fog, homogeneous and impenetrable.
   Oliphant went about his business below at a measured and deliberate pace, purchasing a first-class railway ticket to Dover, reserved, for the ten o'clock evening-express. The ticket-clerk seated Oliphant's National Credit plate in the machine and cranked hard on the lever.
   "There you are, sir. Reserved in your name."
   Thanking the clerk, Oliphant made his way to a second wicket, where he again produced his plate. "I wish to book a cabinette on the morning mail-boat to Ostend." Apparently as an afterthought, as he was putting the boat-tickets and his National Credit plate into his note-case, he requested a second-class ticket on the midnight boat to Calais.
   "Would that be this evening, sir?"
   "Yes."
   "That would be the Bessemer, sir. On National Credit, sir?"
   Oliphant paid for the ticket to Calais with pound-notes from Mr. Beadon's safe.
   Ten till nine, by his father's gold hunter.
   At nine o'clock he boarded a departing train at the last possible moment, paying the first-class fare to Dover directly to the conductor.

   The swinging-saloon ship Bessemer, her twin turtle-decks awash with Dover spray, steamed for Calais sharp on the midnight. Oliphant, having visited the purser with his second-class ticket and his pound-notes, was seated in a brocade armchair in the saloon cabin, sipping mediocre brandy and taking the measure of his fellow passengers. They were, he was pleased to note, a thoroughly unremarkable lot.
   He disliked swinging-saloons, finding the Engine-controlled movements of the cabin, intended to compensate for the vessel's pitch and roll, somehow more unsettling than the ordinary motion of a ship at sea. In addition, the cabin itself was effectively windowless. Swung on gimbals in a central well, the cabin was mounted so deeply in the hull that its windows, such as they were, were located high up along the walls, well above one's line of sight. All in all, as a remedy for mal-de-mer, Oliphant thought it excessive. The public, however, were apparently fascinated by the novel employment of a small Engine, somewhat on the order of a gunnery Engine, whose sole task consisted of maintaining as near a level footing in the cabin as was deemed possible. This was accomplished via something the press referred to, in clacker's argot, as "back-feed." Still, with twin paddles fore and aft, the Bessemer customarily performed the distance of twenty-one miles between Dover and Calais in an hour and thirty minutes.

   He would rather have been above-decks, now, facing into the wind; able then, perhaps, to imagine himself steaming toward some grander, more accessible goal. But the promenade of a swinging-saloon offered no bulwark, only an iron railing, and the Channel wind was damp and cold. And he had, he reminded himself, only the one goal now, and it, in all likelihood, a fool's errand.
   Still: Sybil Gerard. He had decided, upon reading the telegram to Egremont, against having her number spun. He had expected it might attract unwanted attention; with Criminal Anthropometry holding sway at Central Statistics, of course, he had been proven correct. And he rather suspected that Sybil Gerard's file might no longer exist.
   Walter Gerard of Manchester, sworn enemy of progress, agitator for the rights of man. Hanged. And if Walter Gerard had had a daughter, what might have become of her? And if she had been ruined, as she claimed to have been, by Charles Egremont?
   Oliphant's back began to ache. Beneath the chair's stiff brocade, Jacquard-woven with repeated images of the Bessemer, the horsehair stuffing held a chill.
   But if nothing else, he reminded himself, he at least had temporarily escaped the soft black pit of Dr. McNeile's patent Swiss bath-tub.
   Putting his brandy aside unfinished, he nodded then, and napped.
   And dreamed, perhaps, of the Eye.
   The Bessemer docked at Calais at half past one.

   Monsieur Lucien Arslau's apartments were in Passy. At noon, Oliphant presented his card to the concierge, who conveyed it via pneumatic tube to Monsieur Arslau's establishment. Almost immediately, the whistle attached to a nickeled speaking-tube peeped twice; the concierge bent his ear to the funnel; Oliphant made out faint tones of shouted French.
   The concierge showed Oliphant to the lift.
   He was admitted, on the fifth floor, by a liveried manservant wearing an ornate Corsican stiletto through a pleated sash of gros de Naples. The young man managed to bow without taking his eyes from Oliphant. Monsieur Arslau regretted, the servant said, that he was unable at the moment to receive Monsieur Oliphant; in the meantime, would Monsieur Oliphant care for any sort of refreshment?
   Oliphant declared that he would very much appreciate an opportunity to bathe. He would also find a pot of coffee most agreeable.
   He was led through a broad drawing-room, rich in satin and ormolu, buhl cabinets, bronzes, statuettes, and porcelain, where the lizard-eyed Emperor and his dainty Empress, the former Miss Howard, gazed from twin portraits in oil. And then through a morning-room hung with proof-engravings. A graceful curve of stairway mounted from an octagonal anteroom.
   Some two hours later, having bathed in a marble-rimmed tub of gratifying solidity, having taken strong French coffee and lunched upon cutlets a la Maintenon, and wearing borrowed linen with far more starch than he cared for, he was ushered into the study of Monsieur Arslau.
   "Mr. Oliphant, sir," Arslau said, in his excellent English, "it is a great pleasure. I regret not having been able to see you earlier, but… " He gestured toward a broad mahogany desk littered with files and papers. From behind a closed door came the steady clatter of a telegraph. On one wall hung a framed engraving of the Great Napoleon, its mighty gear-towers rising behind a grid-work of plate-glass and iron.
   "Not at all, Lucien. I'm grateful to have had the time to take advantage of your hospitality. Your chef has an extraordinary way with mutton; a sublimated meat that could scarcely have grown on any mundane sheep."
   Arslau smiled. Nearly Oliphant's height, broader in the shoulders, he was some forty years of age and wore his greying beard in the Imperial fashion. His cravat was embroidered with small golden bees. "I've had your letter, of course." He returned to his desk and settled himself in a high-backed chair upholstered in dark-green leather. Oliphant took a seat in an armchair opposite.
   "I must admit my curiosity, Laurence, as to what it is you are currently about." Arslau made a steeple of his fingers and peered over them, raising his eyebrows. "The nature of your request would hardly seem to warrant the precautions you deem necessary… "
   "On the contrary, Lucien, you must know that I would not presume in this way upon our acquaintance for any but the most pressing of reasons."
   "But no, my friend," Arslau said, with a dismissive little wave of his hands, "you have asked the merest of favors. Among colleagues, men such as ourselves, it is nothing. I am simply curious; it is one of my many vices. You convey to me a letter by Imperial diplomatic pouch—no mean feat in itself, for an Englishman, though I know that you are familiar with our friend Bayard. Your letter requires my help in locating a certain English adventuress, no more. You believe she may be resident in France. Yet you stress the need for very great secrecy; you warn me particularly against communicating with you either by telegraph or by the regular post. You instruct me to await your arrival. What am I to make of this? Have you succumbed at last to the wiles of some woman?"
   "Alas, I have not."
   "Given the current model of English womanhood, my friend, I find that entirely understandable. Far too many of your gentlewomen aspire to be elevated to the level of masculine intellectuality—superior to crinoline, superior to pearl-powder, above taking the pains to be pretty, above making themselves agreeable in any way! What a dreary, utilitarian, entirely ugly life an Englishman shall eventually lead, if this trend continues! So why then, I ask, have you crossed the Channel to find an English adventuress? Not that we haven't our share of them. They're rather thick upon the ground, actually, not to mention the origin"—Arslau smiled—"of our own Empress."
   "You yourself have never married, Lucien," Oliphant remarked, attempting to deflect Arslau from his purpose.
   "But look at matrimony! Who is to say which shall be the one judicious selection out of the nine hundred and ninety-nine mistakes? Which is to be the one eel out of the barrel of snakes? The girl on the kerbstone may be the one woman out of every female creature in this universe capable of making me a happy man, my friend, yet I pass her by, and bespatter her with the mud from my wheels, in my utter ignorance!" Arslau laughed. "No, I have not married, and your mission is a political one."
   "Of course."
   "Things are not well with Britain. I don't need my British sources to tell me that, Oliphant. The papers suffice. The death of Byron…"
   "Great Britain's political direction, Lucien—indeed, her ultimate stability as a nation—may even now be at stake. I need not remind you of the paramount importance of our two nations' continued mutual recognition and support."
   "And the matter of this Miss Gerard, Oliphant? Shall I take it you suggest she is somehow pivotal in the situation?"
   Oliphant took out his cigar-case and selected one of Beadon's habanas. His fingers brushed the folded text of Sybil Gerard's telegram. He closed the case. "Do you mind if I smoke?"
   "Please do."
   "Thank you. The matters which hinge upon Sybil Gerard are entirely British, entirely domestic. They may stand, ultimately, to affect France, but in a most indirect way." Oliphant clipped and pierced his cigar.
   "Are you entirely sure of that?"
   "I am."

   "I am not." Arslau rose to bring Oliphant a copper ashtray atop a walnut stand. He returned to his desk but remained standing. "What do you know of the Jacquardine Society?"
   "They are the approximate equivalent of our Steam Intellect Society, are they not?"
   "Yes and no. There is another, a secret society, within the Jacquardines. They style themselves Les Fils de Vaucanson. Certain of them are anarchists, others in league with the Marianne, others with the Universal Fraternity, others with any sort of rabble. Class-war conspirators, you understand? Others are simply criminals. But you know this, Laurence."
   Oliphant took a lucifer from a box emblazoned with a stippled image of the Bessemer, and struck it. He lit his cigar.
   "You tell me that the woman you know as Sybil Gerard is of no concern to France," Arslau said.
   "You think otherwise?"
   "Perhaps. Tell me what you know of our difficulties with the Great Napoleon."
   "Very little. Wakefield of Central Statistics mentioned it to me. The Engine is no longer functioning accurately?"
   "Ordinateurs, thank the good God, are not my specialty. The Napoleon performs with its accustomed speed and accuracy in most instances, I am informed, but an outre element of inconstancy presently haunts the machine's higher functions… " Arslau sighed. "Those higher functions being deemed a matter of considerable national pride, I have myself been forced to peruse reams of the most abstruse technical prose in the Empire. To no ultimate avail, it now seems, as we've had the culprit in hand."
   "The culprit?"
   "An avowed member of Les Fils de Vaucanson. His name is of no importance. He was arrested in Lyons in connection with an ordinary case of civil fraud involving a municipal ordinateur. Elements of his subsequent confession brought him to the attention of the Commission of Special Services, and hence to ours. During interrogation, he revealed his responsibility for the current lamentable state of our Great Napoleon."
   "He confessed to le sabotage, then?"
   "No. He would not confess to that. He refused, until the end. With regard to the Napoleon, he would admit only to having run a certain sequence of punch-cards, a mathematical formula."
   Oliphant watched the smoke from his cigar spiral toward the high ceiling's ornate plaster rosette.
   "The formula came from London," Arslau continued. "He obtained it from an Englishwoman. Her name was Sybil Gerard."
   "Have you attempted analysis of this formula?"
   "No. It was stolen, our Jacquardine claimed, spirited away by a woman he knew as Flora Bartelle, apparently an American."
   "I see."
   "Then tell me what you see, my friend, for I myself am very much in the dark."
   The Eye. All-seeing, the sublime weight of its perception pressing in upon him from every direction.
   Oliphant hesitated. Ash from his cigar fell unnoticed to Arslau's rich carpet. "I have yet to meet Sybil Gerard," he said, "but I may be able to offer you information regarding this formula you've mentioned. It may even be possible to obtain a copy. I can promise nothing, however, until I myself am allowed to interview the lady in question, privately and at some length."
   Arslau fell silent. He seemed to look through Oliphant. At last he nodded. "We can arrange that."
   "She is not, I take it, in custody?"
   "Let us say that we are aware of her movements."
   "You allow her apparent freedom, yet observe her closely?"
   "Precisely that. If we take her now, and she reveals nothing, the trail goes cold."
   "As ever, Arslau, your technique is impeccable. And when might it be arranged for me to meet with her?"
   The Eye, the pressure, the pounding of his heart.
   "This evening, if you so desire," said Monsieur Arslau of the Police des Chateaux, adjusting his gold-embroidered cravat.

   The walls of the Cafe de l'Univers were hung with paintings, etched mirrors, and enamel plaques advertising the ubiquitous product of Pernod Fils. The pictures, if one could call them that, were either grotesque daubs, seemingly executed in a messy imitation of Engine-stippling, or queer geometric formulations suggesting the restless motion of kinotrope-bits. In some cases, Oliphant supposed, the painters themselves were present—or such he took them to be, these long-haired fellows in velvet caps, their corduroy trousers smeared with pigment and tobacco-ash. But the majority of the clientele—according to his companion, one Jean Beraud—consisted of kinotropistes. These gentlemen of the Latin Quarter sat and drank with their black-clad grisettes at the round marble tables, or held forth on theoretical matters before small groups of their peers.
   Beraud, in an unseasonable boater and a brown suit of intensely Gallic cut, was one of Arslau's mouchards, a professional informer who referred to the kinotropists as members of "le milieu." He was fresh and rosy as a young pig, he drank Vittel and peppermint, and Oliphant had taken an immediate dislike to him. The kinotropists seemed to favor the absinthe of Pernod Fils; Oliphant, sipping a glass of red wine, watched the ritual of glass and water-decanter, of sugar-lump and trowel-shaped spoon.
   "Absinthe is the bed of tuberculosis," Beraud said.
   "Why do you suppose that Madame Tournachon would choose to appear tonight in this cafe, Beraud?"
   The mouchard shrugged. "She is a familiar of le milieu, monsieur. She goes to Madelon's, also to Batiffol's, but it is here, in l'Univers, that she most nearly finds companionship."
   "And why is that, do you think?"
   "Because she was Gautier's mistress, of course. He was a kind of prince here, monsieur, it must be understood. Her relationship with Gautier has necessarily limited her contacts with ordinary society. He taught her French, or such French as she has."
   "What sort of woman, exactly, do you take her to be?"
   Beraud smirked. "She is perhaps attractive, but cold. Unsympathetic. In the manner of Englishwomen, you understand."
   "When she arrives, Beraud—if she arrives, I should say—you are to take your leave immediately."
   Beraud raised his eyebrows. "On the contrary, monsieur—"
   "You are to go, Beraud. Take your leave." A measured pause. "Vanish."
   The sharply padded shoulders of Beraud's brown suit rose at the word.
   "You will instruct the cab to wait, and the stenographer as well. The stenographer, Beraud—his English is adequate? My friend—my very good friend. Monsieur Arslau—has assured me that this is the case… "
   "Entirely adequate, yes! And monsieur"—getting up so quickly that he nearly overturned his bentwood chair—"it is she… "
   The woman now entering l'Univers might easily have been mistaken for a modish Parisienne of more than common means. Slender and blond, she wore a somber merino crinoline with matching cloak and bonnet, narrowly trimmed in mink.
   As Beraud continued his hasty retreat into the depths of the cafe, Oliphant rose. Her eyes, very alert, very blue, met his. He approached her, hat in hand, and bowed. "Forgive me," he said in English. "We have not been introduced, but I must speak with you regarding a matter of great urgency."
   Recognition dawned in the wide blue eyes, and fear.
   "Sir, you mistake me for another."
   "You are Sybil Gerard."
   Her lower-lip was trembling now, and Oliphant experienced an abrupt, powerful, and entirely unexpected sympathy. "I am Laurence Oliphant, Miss Gerard. You are presently in terrible danger. I wish to help you."
   "That is not my name, sir. Pray let me pass. My friends are waiting."

   "I know that Egremont betrayed you. I understand the nature of his betrayal."
   She started at the name, Oliphant in terror of her swooning on the spot, but then she gave a little shudder and seemed to study him quietly for a moment. "I saw you in Grand's, that night," she said. "You were in the smoker with Houston and… Mick. You had a gammy arm, up in a sling."
   "Please," he said, "join me."
   Seated opposite her at his table, Oliphant listened as she ordered absinthe de vidangeur in quite passable French.
   "Do you know Lamartine, the singer?" she asked.
   "I'm sorry, no."
   "He invented it, 'scavenger's absinthe.' I can't drink it otherwise."
   The waiter arrived with the drink, a mixture of absinthe and red wine.
   "Theo taught me to order it," she said, "before he… went away." She drank, the wine red against her painted lips. "I know you've come to take me back. Don't gull me otherwise. I know a copper when I meet one."
   "I have no desire to see you return to England, Miss Gerard—"
   "Tournachon. I'm Sybil Tournachon. French by marriage."
   "Your husband is here in Paris?"
   "No," she said, lifting an oval locket of cut-steel on its black ribbon. She snapped it open, displaying a daguerreotyped miniature of a handsome young man. "Aristide. He fell at Philadelphia, in the great inferno. He volunteered, to fight on the Union side. He was real, you know; I mean, he actually existed, and wasn't just one of them the clackers make up… " She gazed at the little image with a look of mingled longing and sadness, though Oliphant understood that she had never in her life set eyes upon Aristide Tournachon.
   "It was a marriage of convenience, I take it."
   "Yes. And you've come to take me back."
   "Not at all, Miss… Tournachon."
   "I don't believe you."
   "You must. A great deal depends upon it, not least your own safety. Since you departed London, Charles Egremont has become a very powerful, a very dangerous man. As dangerous to the well-being of Great Britain as he is no doubt dangerous to you."
   "Charles? Dangerous?" She seemed suddenly on the verge of laughter. "You're gulling me."
   "I need your help. Desperately. As desperately as you need mine."
   "Do I, then?"
   "Egremont has powerful resources at his command, branches of Government easily capable of reaching you here."
   "You mean the Specials, and that lot?"
   "More to the point, I must inform you that your activities are even now monitored by at least one secret agency of Imperial France… "
   "Because Theophile chose to help me?"
   "Indeed, that seems to be the case… "
   She drank off the last of the vile-looking concoction in her glass. "Dear Theophile. What a lovely, silly sort of cove he was. Always in his scarlet waistcoat, and madly clever at clacking. I gave him Mick's set of fancy cards, and he was terribly kind to me then. Spun me up a marriage-license and a French citizen-number rat-tat-tat. Then, one afternoon, I was to meet him here…"
   "Yes?"
   "He never came." She lowered her eyes. "He used to boast of having a 'gambling modus.' They all do, but he talked as if he meant it. Someone might have believed him. It was foolish of him… "
   "Did he ever speak with you about his interest in the Engine known as the Great Napoleon?"
   "Their monster, you mean? Your Paris clacker speaks of little else, sir! They're mad for the thing!"
   "The French authorities believe that Theophile Gautier damaged the Great Napoleon with Radley's cards."
   "Is he dead, then, Theo?"
   Oliphant hesitated. "Alas, I believe so, yes."
   "That's so vicious bloody cruel," she said, "to spirit a man away like a rabbit in a conjuring trick, and leave his loved-ones ever to wonder, and worry, and never rest! It's vile."
   Oliphant found that he could not meet her eyes.
   "There's a deal of that about in this Paris, there is," she said. "The things I've heard their clackers jest about… And London, they say, is no better, really, to them as know. Do you know they say the Rads murdered Wellington? They say the sappers, the sand-hogs, hand-in-glove with the Rads, cut a tunnel beneath that restaurant, and the master sapper himself tamped the powder and set the fuses… Then the Rads lay the blame on men like…"
   "Your father. Yes. I know."
   "And knowing that, you'd ask me to trust you?" There was defiance in her eyes, and perhaps a pride long-buried.
   "Knowing that Charles Egremont betrayed your father, Walter Gerard, unto his destruction; that he betrayed you as well, bringing about your ruin in the eyes of society; yes, I must ask that you trust me. In exchange, I offer you the complete, utter, and virtually instantaneous negation of your betrayer's political career."
   She lowered her eyes again, and seemed to consider. "Could you do that, really?" she asked.
   "Your testament alone will serve. I shall be merely the instrument of its delivery."
   "No," she said at last, "if I were to denounce him publicly, then I would expose myself as well. Charles isn't the only one I need to fear, as you yourself have said. Remember, I was there that night, in Grand's; I know how long an arm revenge can have."
   "I've not suggested denouncing him publicly. Blackmail will suffice."
   Now her eyes were far away, as if she walked the distant pavements of memory. "They were so close, Charles and my father, or so it seemed… Perhaps if things had taken a different turn…"
   "Egremont lives daily with that betrayal. It is the crucial grain of constant irritation around which his depraved politics have been allowed to form. Your telegram galvanized his guilt—his terror of those early Luddite sympathies being revealed. Now he would tame the beast, make political terror his constant ally. But you and I stand in his way."
   The blue eyes were strangely calm. "I find I wish to believe you, Mr. Oliphant."
   "I will keep you safe," Oliphant said, quite startled by his own intensity. "So long as you choose to remain in France, you shall do so under the protection of powerful friends, colleagues of mine, agents of the Imperial court. A cab awaits us, and a stenographer, to take down the details of your testimony."
   With a tortured, flatulent wheeze of compressed air, a small panmelodium was activated at the rear of the cafe. Oliphant, turning, caught the eye of the mouchard Beraud, who was smoking a Dutch clay pipe amid a cluster of chattering kinotropistes.
   "Madame Tournachon," Oliphant said, rising, "may I offer you my arm?"
   "It's healed, has it?" She rose in a rustle of crinoline.
   "Entirely," Oliphant said, remembering the lightning-stroke of the samurai's sword, in Edo, amid the shadows. He had been attempting to hold the fellow off with a riding-crop.
   As the Engine-driven music of the grand panmelodium brought the grisettes from their chairs, she took his arm.
   A girl burst in, then, from the street, her naked breasts daubed with green. About her waist were strung angular constructs of copper-foil, like the leaves of a date-palm approximated by a kinotrope. She was followed by two boys in a similar lack of attire, and Oliphant felt utterly lost.
   "Come then," Sybil said, "don't you know they're art students, and been to a bal? It's Montmartre, you know, and the art students, they've such a mad and lovely time."

   Oliphant had entertained the gallant notion of personally delivering to Charles Egremont a transcript of Sybil Gerard's testimony. But upon his return to England, those symptoms of advanced syphilis which Dr. McNeile had incorrectly diagnosed as railway-spine temporarily overcame him. Disguised as a commercial traveler from M. Arslau's native Alsace, Oliphant went to ground in Brighton's hydropathic spa, to take the waters and dispatch a number of telegrams.

   Mr. Mori Arinori arrives in Belgravia at a quarter past four, driving a new-model Zephyr gurney leased from a commercial garage in Camden Town, just as Charles Egremont is departing for Parliament and a most important speech.
   Egremont's body-guard, on assignment from the Central Statistics Bureau's Department of Criminal Anthropometry, a machine-carbine slung beneath his coat, watches as Mori descends from the Zephyr, a diminutive figure in evening-clothes.
   Mori marches straight across the new-fallen snow, his boots leaving perfect prints upon the black macadam.
   "For you, sir," Mori says and bows, handing Egremont the stout manila envelope. "Very good day to you, sir." Donning round goggles with an elasticated band, Mori returns to his Zephyr.
   "What an extraordinary little personage," Egremont says, looking down at the envelope. "One hasn't seen a Chinaman, got up like that…"

   Recede.
   Reiterate.
   Rise above these black patterns of wheel-tracks,
   These snow-swept streets,
   Into the great map of London,
   forgetting

MODUS
The Images Tabled

The Language of Signs
   The circular arrangement of the axes of the Difference Engine 'round large central wheels led to the most extended prospects. The whole of arithmetic now appeared within the grasp of mechanism. A vague glimpse even of an Analytical Engine opened out, and I pursued with enthusiasm the shadowy vision.
   The drawings and the experiments were of the most costly kind. Draftsmen of the highest order were engaged, to economize the labor of my own head; whilst skilled workmen executed the experimental machinery.
   In order to carry out my pursuits successfully, I had purchased a house with about a quarter of an acre of ground, in a very quiet locality in London. My coach-house was converted into a forge and foundry, whilst my stables were transformed into a workshop. I built other extensive workshops myself, and had a fire-proof building for my drawings and draftsmen.
   The complicated relations amongst the various parts of the machinery would have baffled the most tenacious memory. I overcame that difficulty by improving and extending a language of signs, the Mechanical Notation, which in 1826 I had explained in a paper printed in the Philosophic Transactions of the Royal Society. By such means I succeeded in mastering a train of investigation so vast in extent that no length of years could otherwise have enabled me to control it. By the aid of the language of signs, the Engine became a reality.
   –LORD CHARLES BABBAGE, Passages in the Life of a Philosopher, 1864.
 

Letters from Our Readers
   [From The Mechanics Magazine, 1830.]
 
   To judge by readers' letters we receive, certain among our public would doubt that political matters come within the province of this journal. But the interests of science and manufacturing are inextricably mixed with a nation's political philosophy. How then can we be silent?
   We look with delight for a grand new age for Science, as well as to every other PRODUCTIVE interest of this country, from the election to Parliament of a man of Mr. Babbage's eminence in the scientific world, his tried independence of spirit, his very searching and business-like habits.
   Therefore we say forthrightly to every elector of Finsbury who is a reader of this journal—go and vote for Mr. Babbage. If you are an inventor, whom the ubiquitous and oppressive TAX ON PATENTS shuts out from the field of fair competition, and desire to see that TAX replaced by a wise and deliberate system of PUBLIC SUBSIDIES—go and vote for Mr. Babbage. If you are a manufacturer, harassed and obstructed in your operations by the fiscal stupidities of the present Government—if you would see British industry become as free as the air you breathe—go and vote for Mr. Babbage. If you are a mechanic, and depend for your daily bread on a constant and steady demand for the products of your skill, and are aware of the influence of free trade on your fortunes—go and vote for Mr. Babbage. If you are a devotee of Science and Progress—principle and practice united as bone and sinew—then meet us today on Islington Green, and VOTE FOR MR. BABBAGE!

In the Time of Troubles
   The results of the general election of 1830 made public feeling obvious. Byron and his Radicals had captured the tone of the day, and the Whig Party were an utter shambles. Lord Wellington's Tones, however, resenting the threat to aristocratic privilege posed by Radical proposals of "merit-lordship," took a hard line. The Commons procrastinated on the Radical Reform Bill, and on 8 October the Lords threw it out. The King refused to create new Radical peers who might force the Bill through; on the contrary, the Fitzelarences were ennobled instead, leading Byron to comment bitterly: "How much better it is to be a Royal bastard than a philosopher in England at present. But a mighty change is at hand."
   Popular pressure mounted swiftly. In Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, the working-class, inspired by Babbage's ideals of union ownership and mutual co-operatives, took to the streets in massive torchlight parades. The Industrial Radical Party, disdaining violence, called for moral suasion and a peaceful mass-campaign for redress of legitimate grievances. But the Government remained stubborn, and events took an ugly turn. In a rising crescendo of random outrage, violent rural "Swing bands" and proletarian Luddites attacked aristocratic homes and capitalist factories alike. Mobs in London shattered the windows in the house of the Duke of Wellington and other Tory peers, and, cobblestones in hand, lay sullenly in wait for the passing carriages of the elite. The Anglican bishops, who had voted against Reform in the Lords, were burned in effigy. Ultra-radical conspirators, fired to frenzy by the furious polemics of the atheist R B. Shelley, attacked and looted Establishment churches.
   On 12 December Lord Byron introduced a new Reform Bill, more radical yet, proposing outright disfranchisement of the hereditary British aristocracy, including himself. This was more than the lories could bear, and Wellington involved himself in covert planning for a military coup.
   The crisis had polarized the nation. At this juncture, the middle-classes, terrified of the prospect of anarchy, made their own move and came down on the side of the Radicals. A tax-strike was declared, to force Wellington from office; there was a deliberate run on the banks, in which merchants demanded and hoarded gold specie, bringing the national economy to a grinding halt.
   In Bristol, after three days of major riots, Wellington ordered the Army to put down "Jacobinism" by any means necessary. In the resulting massacre three hundred people, including three prominent Radical M.P.'s, lost their lives. When the news of the massacre reached him, a furious Byron, now calling himself "Citizen Byron," and appearing without coat or necktie at a London rally, called for a general strike. This rally was also attacked by Tory cavalry, with bloody results, but Byron eluded capture. Two days later the nation was under martial-law.
   In future, the Duke of Wellington would turn his considerable military genius against his own countrymen. The first uprisings against the Tory Regime—as it must now be called—were swiftly and efficiently put down, while garrison troops ruled all major cities. The Army remained loyal to the victor of Waterloo, and the aristocracy, to their discredit, also threw in their lot with the Duke.
   But the Radical Party elite had escaped apprehension, abetted by a well-organized covert network of Party faithful. By the spring of '31, any hope of a swift military solution was over. Mass hangings and deportations were answered by sullen resistance and vicious guerrilla reprisals. The Regime had destroyed any vestige of popular support, and England was in the throes of class-war.
   –The Time of Troubles: A Popular History, 1912, BY W. E. PRATCHETT, Ph.D., F.R.S.
 

Somber Melodies of the Automatic Organs
   [This private letter of July 1855 conveys Benjamin Disraeli's eye-witness impressions of the funeral of Lord Byron. The text derives from a tape-spool emitted by a Colt & Maxwell Typing Engine. The addressee is unknown.]
 
   Lady Annabella Byron entered on the arm of her daughter, looking very frail. She seemed a little dazed. Both mother and daughter were very worn and white, at the end of their forces. Then a funeral march was played—very fine—the panmelodium sounding splendid amid the somber melodies of the automatic organs.
   Then the processions arrived. The Speaker first, proceeded by heralds with white staves but in mourning-dress. The Speaker was quite splendid. He walked slowly and firmly, very impassive and dignified; an almost Egyptianate face. The mace was carried before him, and he wore a gold-laced gown, very fine. Then the Ministers; Colonial Secretary, very dapper indeed. Viceroy of India looks quite recovered from his malaria. Chairman of the Commission on Free Trade looked the wickedest of the human race, as if writhing under a load of disreputable guilt.
   Then the House of Lords. The Lord Chancellor absolutely grotesque, and made more so by the tremendous figure of the Sergeant-at-Arms with a silver chain and large, white silk bows on his shoulders for mourning. Lord Babbage, pale and upright, most dignified. Young Lord Huxley, lean, light on his feet, very splendid. Lord Scowcroft, the shiftiest person I ever saw, in threadbare clothes like a sexton.
   The coffin came solemnly along, the bearers holding feebly onto it. The Prince Consort Albert foremost among them, with the oddest gnawing look—duty, dignity, and fear. He was kept waiting, I hear, just in the doorway, and muttered in German about the Stink.
   When the coffin entered, the widowed Iron Lady looked a thousand years old.

The Widowed Iron Lady
   So now the world falls into the hands of the little men, the hypocrites and clerks.
   Look at them. They have not the mettle for the great work. They will botch it.
   Oh, even now I could set it all to rights, if only the fools would listen to sense, but I could never speak as you did, and they do not listen to women. You were their Great Orator, a puffed and painted mountebank, without one real idea in your head—no gift for logic, nothing but your posturing wickedness, and yet they listened to you; oh, how they did listen. You wrote your silly books of verse, you praised Satan and Cain and adultery, and every kind of wicked foolishness, and the fools could not get enough of it. They knocked down the bookshop doors. And women threw themselves at your feet, armies of them. I never did. But then, you married me.
   I was innocent then. From the days of our courtship, some moral instinct in me revolted at your sly teasing, your hateful double-entendres and insinuations, but I did see qualities of promise in you, and ignored my doubts. How swiftly you revived them, as my husband.
   You cruelly used my innocence; you made me a party to sodomy before I even knew the nature of that sin; before I learned the hidden words for the unspeakable. Pederastia, manustupration, fellatio—you were so steeped in unnatural vice that you could spare not even the marriage-bed. You polluted me, even as you had polluted your own hare-brained fool of a sister.
   If society had learned the tenth of what I knew, you would have been driven from England like a leper. Back to Greece, back to Turkey and your catamites.
   How easily, then, might I have ruined you, and very nearly did, to spite you, for it vexed me sorely that you did not know, or care to know, the depth of my conviction. I sought refuge in my mathematics, then, and kept to silence, wishing still to be a good wife in the eyes of society, for I had uses to which to put you, and great work to do, and no means with which to do it, save through my husband. For I had glimpsed the true path toward the greatest good for the greatest number, a good so great it made a trifle of my own humble wishes.
   Charles taught it me. Decent, brilliant, unworldly Charles, your opposite in every way; so full of great plans, and the pure light of mathematical science, but so utterly impolitic, so entirely unable to suffer fools gladly. He had the gifts of a Newton, but he could not persuade.
   I brought you together. At first you hated him, and mocked him behind his back, and me as well, for showing you a truth beyond your comprehension. I persisted; begged you to think of honor, of service, of your own glory, of the future of the child in my womb, Ada, that strange child. (Poor Ada, she does not look well, she has too much of you in her.)
   But you cursed me for a cold-hearted shrew and retired in a drunken temper. For the sake of that greater good, I painted a smile on my face and descended open-eyed into the very Pit. How it pained me, that vile greasy probing and animal nastiness; but I let you do as you liked, and forgave you for it, and petted and kissed you for it, as if I liked it. And you wept like a child, and were grateful, and talked of love undying and united souls, until you tired of that sort of talk. And then, to hurt me, you told me dreadful, shocking things, to disgust me and frighten me away, but I would no longer allow you to frighten me; I was steeled to anything, that night. So I forgave you, forgave and forgave, until at last you could find no further confession even in the foulest dregs of your soul, and at last you had no pretense left, nothing left to say.
   I imagine that after that night you became frightened of me, perhaps, a little frightened, and that did you a great deal of good, I think. It never hurt me so again, after that night. I taught myself to play all your "pretty little games," and to win them. That was the price I paid, to put your beast in harness.
   If there is a Judge of Men in another world, though I no longer believe that, no, not in my heart, and yet at times, evil times, times like these—I fancy I sense a never-closing, all-embracing Eye, and feel the awful pressure of its dreadful comprehension. And if there be a Judge, milord husband, then do not think to gull him. No, do not boast of your magnificent sins and demand damnation—for how little you knew, over the years. You, the greatest Minister of the greatest Empire in history—you flinched, you were feeble, you dodged every consequence—
   Are these tears?
   We should not have killed so many…
   We, I say, but it was I, I who sacrificed my virtue, my faith, my salvation, all burnt to black ashes on the altar of your ambition. For all your bold trumpery talk of Corsairs and Bonaparte, you had no iron in you; you wept even at the thought of hanging miserable Luddites, and could not bear to chain away vicious mad Shelley, until I forced your hand. And when reports came from our bureaux, hinting, requesting, then demanding the right to eliminate the enemies of England, it was I who read them, I who covertly weighed lives in the balance, and I who signed your name, while you ate and drank and joked with those men you called your friends.
   And now these fools who bury you will brush me aside as if I were nothing, had accomplished nothing, simply because you are gone. You, their sounding-brass, their idol of paint and dyed hair. The truth, the dreadful slime-entangled roots of history, vanish now without trace. The truth is buried with your gilt sarcophagus.
   I must stop thinking in this manner. I am weeping. They think me old and foolish. Was not every civil evil we committed repaid, repaid ten-fold for the public good?
   Oh Judge, hear me. Oh Eye, search the depths of my soul. If I am guilty, then you must forgive me. I took no pleasure in what I had to do. I swear unto you: I took no pleasure in it