will encounter powerful rivals. After all, even though you have not
corresponded to my hopes, the day on which you change your mind,
look me up at my house in the Escolta, and I'll be glad to help you."

Basilio thanked him briefly and went away.

"Have I really made a mistake?" mused Simoun, when he found himself
alone. "Is it that he doubts me and meditates his plan of revenge
so secretly that he fears to tell it even in the solitude of the
night? Or can it be that the years of servitude have extinguished
in his heart every human sentiment and there remain only the animal
desires to live and reproduce? In that case the type is deformed
and will have to be cast over again. Then the hecatomb is preparing:
let the unfit perish and only the strongest survive!"

Then he added sadly, as if apostrophizing some one: "Have patience, you
who left me a name and a home, have patience! I have lost all--country,
future, prosperity, your very tomb, but have patience! And thou,
noble spirit, great soul, generous heart, who didst live with only one
thought and didst sacrifice thy life without asking the gratitude or
applause of any one, have patience, have patience! The methods that I
use may perhaps not be thine, but they are the most direct. The day
is coming, and when it brightens I myself will come to announce it
to you who are now indifferent. Have patience!"





CHAPTER VIII