He suited the action to the word.  Brand looked on, not much impressed.

“That is all nonsense, O’Halloran!” Lord Evelyn said, bluntly.

“I tell you,” O’Halloran said, with some vehemence, “that the 14th of January, 1858, kept Louis Napoleon in such a state of tremor, that he would have done a good deal more than lend his army to Sardinia to sweep the Austrians out rather than abandon himself to the fate that Cavour plainly and distinctly indicated.  But for the threat of another dose of Orsini pills, do you think you would ever have heard of Magenta and Solferino?”

He seemed to rouse himself a bit now.

“No,” he said, “I do not approve of assassination as a political weapon.  It seldom answers.  But it has always been the policy of absolute governments, and of their allies the priests and the police, to attribute any murders that might occur to the secret societies, and so to terrify stupid people.  It is one of the commonest slanders in history.  Why, everybody knows how Fouche humbugged the First Napoleon, and got up vague plots to prove that he, and he alone, knew what was going on.  When Karl Sand killed Kotzebue—­oh, of course, that was a fine excuse for the German kings and princes to have another raid against free speech, though Sand declared he had nothing in the world to do with either the Tugendbund or any such society.  Who now believes that Young Italy killed Count Rossi?  Rossi was murdered by the agents of the clericals; it was distinctly proved.  But any stick is good enough to beat a dog with.  No matter what the slander is, so long as you can get up a charge, either for the imprisoning of a dangerous enemy or for terrifying the public mind.  You yourself, Mr. Brand—­I can see that your only notion of the innumerable secret societies now in Europe is that they will probably assassinate people.  That’s what they said about the Carbonari too.  The objects of the Carbonari were plain as plain could be; but no sooner had General Pepe kicked out Ferdinand and put in a constitutional monarch, than Austria must needs attribute every murder that was committed, to those detestable Carbonari, so that she should call upon Prussia and Russia to join her in strangling the infant liberties of Europe.  You see, we can’t get at those Royal slanderers.  We can get at a man like Sir James Graham, when we force him to apologize in the House of Commons for having said that Mazzini instigated the assassination of the spies Emiliani and Lazzareschi."’

“But, good heavens!” exclaimed Brand, “does anybody doubt that that was a political double murder?”

O’Halloran shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.

“You may call it murder if you like; others might call it a fitting punishment.  But all I was asking you to do was to remove from your mind that bugbear that the autocratic governments of Europe have created for their own uses.  No secret society—­if you except those Nihilists, who appear to have gone mad altogether—­I say, no secret society of the present day recognizes political assassination as a normal or desirable weapon; though it may have to be resorted to in extreme cases.  You, as an individual, might, in certain circumstances, lawfully kill a man; but that is neither the custom, nor the object, nor the chief thought of your life.”