“You understand, now,” he continued. “I burn, I suffer within, my
pains are measureless and eternal, but my skin protects you and the
globe from harm. Heat is power, energy, but is only useful to man
when he can control it and graduate its application to his needs.
You cannot do that with radium, now; it will not be prodigiously
useful to you until polonium shall put the slave whip in your hand.
I can release from my body the radium force in any measure I please,
great or small; at my will I can set in motion the works of a lady’s
watch or destroy a world. You saw me light that unholy cigar with my
finger?”