anarchist brotherhood was a very mild affair after all. He believed
in his own literary power, his capacity for suggesting fine shades
and picking perfect words. He thought that with care he could
succeed, in spite of all the people around him, in conveying an
impression of the institution, subtly and delicately false. Syme
had once thought that anarchists, under all their bravado, were
only playing the fool. Could he not now, in the hour of peril, make
Syme think so again?

"Comrades," began Gregory, in a low but penetrating voice, "it is
not necessary for me to tell you what is my policy, for it is your
policy also. Our belief has been slandered, it has been disfigured,
it has been utterly confused and concealed, but it has never been
altered. Those who talk about anarchism and its dangers go
everywhere and anywhere to get their information, except to us,
except to the fountain head. They learn about anarchists from
sixpenny novels; they learn about anarchists from tradesmen's
newspapers; they learn about anarchists from Ally Sloper's
Half-Holiday and the Sporting Times. They never learn about
anarchists from anarchists. We have no chance of denying the
mountainous slanders which are heaped upon our heads from one end
of Europe to another. The man who has always heard that we are
walking plagues has never heard our reply. I know that he will not
hear it tonight, though my passion were to rend the roof. For it is
deep, deep under the earth that the persecuted are permitted to
assemble, as the Christians assembled in the Catacombs. But if, by
some incredible accident, there were here tonight a man who all his
life had thus immensely misunderstood us, I would put this question
to him: 'When those Christians met in those Catacombs, what sort of
moral reputation had they in the streets above? What tales were