"So your mother would like to see you in Parliament?" asked the Count.
"Politics are apt to be a dirty game. One cannot touch dirt without
soiling one's hands. We have a deputy here, the Commendator
Morena--well, one does not like to speak about him. Let me ask you a
question, Mr. Denis. Why do politicians exist?"
"I suppose the answer would be that is profitable to mankind to be run
by somebody."
"Profitable, at all events, to those who do the running. Your good Sir
Herbert Street has lately sent me a batch of books about the ideal
public life of the future. Socialistic forecasts, and that kind of
literature. He is a world-improver, you know, among other things. They
have amused me more than I thought they would. That venerable blunder:
to think that in changing the form of government you change the heart
of man. And in other respects, too, these dreamers are at sea. For
surely we should aim at simplification of machinery. Conceive, now, the
state of affairs where everybody is more or less employed by the
community--the community, that comfortable word!--in some patriotic
business or other.
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