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Then had come Africa, where his notions had been
further dislocated by those natives who derided both the one and the
other--such fine healthy animals, all the same! A candid soul, he
allowed his natural shrewdness and logic to play freely with memories
of his earlier experiences among the London poor. Those experiences now
became fraught with a new meaning. The solemn doctrines he had preached
in those days: were they really a panacea for all the ills of the
flesh? He thought upon the gaunt bodies, starved souls, and white
faces--the dirt, the squalor of it! Was that Christianity, civilization?
The Count, pursuing some other line of thought, broke out into a kind
of Delphic rhapsody:
"Folly of men! The wits of our people have been blunted, their habits
bestialized, their very climate and landscape ruined. The alert genius
of the Greeks is clogged by a barbaric, leaden-hued religion--the
fertile plains of Asia Minor and Spain converted into deserts! We
begin, at last, to apprehend the mischief; we know who is to blame; we
are turning the corner.


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