The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

hollow at the base of the skull, seemed ready to snap.

Mr Verloc, after a grunt of disapproving surprise, returned to the

sofa. Alexander Ossipon got up, tall in his threadbare blue serge

suit under the low ceiling, shook off the stiffness of long

immobility, and strolled away into the kitchen (down two steps) to

look over Stevie’s shoulder. He came back, pronouncing oracularly:

“Very good. Very characteristic, perfectly typical.”

“What’s very good?” grunted inquiringly Mr Verloc, settled again in

the corner of the sofa. The other explained his meaning

negligently, with a shade of condescension and a toss of his head

towards the kitchen:

“Typical of this form of degeneracy – these drawings, I mean.”

“You would call that lad a degenerate, would you?” mumbled Mr

Verloc.

Comrade Alexander Ossipon – nicknamed the Doctor, ex-medical

student without a degree; afterwards wandering lecturer to working-

men’s associations upon the socialistic aspects of hygiene; author

of a popular quasi-medical study (in the form of a cheap pamphlet

seized promptly by the police) entitled “The Corroding Vices of the

Middle Classes”; special delegate of the more or less mysterious

Red Committee, together with Karl Yundt and Michaelis for the work

of literary propaganda – turned upon the obscure familiar of at

least two Embassies that glance of insufferable, hopelessly dense

sufficiency which nothing but the frequentation of science can give

to the dulness of common mortals.

“That’s what he may be called scientifically. Very good type too,

altogether, of that sort of degenerate. It’s enough to glance at

the lobes of his ears. If you read Lombroso – ”

Mr Verloc, moody and spread largely on the sofa, continued to look

down the row of his waistcoat buttons; but his cheeks became tinged

by a faint blush. Of late even the merest derivative of the word

science (a term in itself inoffensive and of indefinite meaning)

had the curious power of evoking a definitely offensive mental

vision of Mr Vladimir, in his body as he lived, with an almost

supernatural clearness. And this phenomenon, deserving justly to

be classed amongst the marvels of science, induced in Mr Verloc an

emotional state of dread and exasperation tending to express itself

in violent swearing. But he said nothing. It was Karl Yundt who

was heard, implacable to his last breath.

“Lombroso is an ass.”

Comrade Ossipon met the shock of this blasphemy by an awful, vacant

stare. And the other, his extinguished eyes without gleams

blackening the deep shadows under the great, bony forehead,

mumbled, catching the tip of his tongue between his lips at every

second word as though he were chewing it angrily:

“Did you ever see such an idiot? For him the criminal is the

prisoner. Simple, is it not? What about those who shut him up

there – forced him in there? Exactly. Forced him in there. And

what is crime? Does he know that, this imbecile who has made his

way in this world of gorged fools by looking at the ears and teeth

of a lot of poor, luckless devils? Teeth and ears mark the

criminal? Do they? And what about the law that marks him still

better – the pretty branding instrument invented by the overfed to

protect themselves against the hungry? Red-hot applications on

their vile skins – hey? Can’t you smell and hear from here the

thick hide of the people burn and sizzle? That’s how criminals are

made for your Lombrosos to write their silly stuff about.”

The knob of his stick and his legs shook together with passion,

whilst the trunk, draped in the wings of the havelock, preserved

his historic attitude of defiance. He seemed to sniff the tainted

air of social cruelty, to strain his ear for its atrocious sounds.

There was an extraordinary force of suggestion in this posturing.

The all but moribund veteran of dynamite wars had been a great

actor in his time – actor on platforms, in secret assemblies, in

private interviews. The famous terrorist had never in his life

raised personally as much as his little finger against the social

edifice. He was no man of action; he was not even an orator of

torrential eloquence, sweeping the masses along in the rushing

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