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 noise and foam of a great enthusiasm.

With a more subtle intention, he took the part of an insolent and venomous evoker of sinister impulses which lurk in the blind envy and exasperated vanity of ignorance, in the suffering and misery of poverty, in all the hopeful and noble illusions of righteous anger, pity, and revolt.

The shadow of his evil gift clung to him yet like the smell of a deadly drug in an old vial of poison, emptied now, useless, ready to be thrown away upon the rubbish-heap of things that had served their time.
Michaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle, smiled vaguely with his glued lips; his pasty moon face drooped under the weight of melancholy assent.
He had been a prisoner himself.

His own skin had sizzled under the red-hot brand, he murmured softly.