Quotation from: The Secret Agent

Written by: Joseph Conrad


A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of
the social scale. The great lady was simple in her own way. His views
and beliefs had nothing in them to shock or startle her, since she judged
them from the standpoint of her lofty position. Indeed, her sympathies
were easily accessible to a man of that sort. She was not an exploiting
capitalist herself; she was, as it were, above the play of economic
conditions. And she had a great capacity of pity for the more obvious
forms of common human miseries, precisely because she was such a complete
stranger to them that she had to translate her conception into terms of
mental suffering before she could grasp the notion of their cruelty. The
Assistant Commissioner remembered very well the conversation between
these two. He had listened in silence. It was something as exciting in
a way, and even touching in its foredoomed futility, as the efforts at
moral intercourse between the inhabitants of remote planets. But this
grotesque incarnation of humanitarian passion appealed somehow, to one's
imagination. At last Michaelis rose, and taking the great lady's
extended hand, shook it, retained it for a moment in his great cushioned
palm with unembarrassed friendliness, and turned upon the semi-private
nook of the drawing-room his back, vast and square, and as if distended
under the short tweed jacket. Glancing about in serene benevolence, he
waddled along to the distant door between the knots of other visitors.
The murmur of conversations paused on his passage. He smiled innocently
at a tall, brilliant girl, whose eyes met his accidentally, and went out
unconscious of the glances following him across the room. Michaelis'
first appearance in the world was a success--a success of esteem unmarred
by a single murmur of derision. The interrupted conversations were
resumed in their proper tone, grave or light. Only a well-set-up, long-
limbed, active-looking man of forty talking with two ladies near a window
remarked aloud, with an unexpected depth of feeling: "Eighteen stone, I
should say, and not five foot six. Poor fellow! It's terrible--terrible."

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