"As always the barbarian. Truly the proverb speaks: 'Jest with the
wounded tiger and warm the adder in your bosom before you seek to lift
the savage from his savagery.'"
He meditated awhile in silence. I watched him uneasily. There was about
him a vague and curious difference--his long fingers emerging from the
sleeves drummed on the chair arms and some hidden exultation strummed
at the back of his voice, lending it unaccustomed vibrancy.
"And you might have been a king of the new regime," he said suddenly.
"Aye, the new--new and inhumanly old!"