Potentially a million rubles is a million working days, the absolutely
irrational right to labour, sweat, life, and blood of a terrible
number of men. Why? What is the ground of reason? Utterly unknown.
Then why not agree with the proposition, gentlemen, that our
profession is to some extent as it were a correction of the excessive
accumulation of values in the hands of individuals, and serves as a
protest against all the hardships, abominations, arbitrariness,
violence, and negligence of the human personality, against all the
monstrosities created by the bourgeois capitalistic organisation of
modern society? Sooner or later, this order of things will assuredly
be overturned by the social revolution. Property will pass away into
the limbo of melancholy memories and with it, alas! we will disappear
from the face of the earth, we, _les braves chevaliers d'industrie_."
The orator paused to take the tray from the hands of the porter, and
placed it near to his hand on the table.
"Excuse me, gentlemen... Here, my good man, take this,... and by the
way, when you go out shut the door close behind you."
"Very good, your Excellency!" the porter bawled in jest.
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