The
latter is the best, perhaps.
"You are a scoundrel, my dear Alpha. I say it in the friendliest and
most brutal manner. And you are not merely a scoundrel--you are the
most dangerous sort of scoundrel--the smiling, benevolent scoundrel.
"You know quite well that your house, with all that therein is, stands
on the edge of a precipice, and that at any moment a landslip might
topple it over into everlasting ruin. And yet you behave as though
your house was planted in the midst of a vast and secure plain,
sheltered from every imaginable havoc. I speak metaphorically, of
course. It is not a material precipice that your house stands on the
edge of; it is a metaphorical precipice. But the perils symbolized by
that precipice are real enough.
"It is, for example, a real chauffeur whose real wrist may by a single
false movement transform you from the incomparable Alpha into an item
in the books of the registrar of deaths. It is a real microbe who may
at this very instant be industriously planning your swift destruction.
And it is another real microbe who may have already made up his or her
mind that you shall finish your days helpless and incapable on the
flat of your back.
"Suppose you to be dead--what would happen? You would leave debts,
for, although you are solvent, you are only solvent because you have
the knack of always putting your hand on money, and death would
automatically make you insolvent.
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