"
Sir Henry Marquis laughed.
"It is not entirely a question of values, Count."
"I beg you to pardon me, monsieur," the Italian went on.
"Doubtless, on this subject I do nothing more than reveal an
intelligence lamentably inefficient; but I had the idea that
English people were accustomed to regard property of greater
importance than life."
"I have never heard," replied the Englishman, smiling, "that our
courts gave more attention to pigs than to murder."
"Why, yes, monsieur," said the Count - "that is precisely what
they have been accustomed to do. It is only, I believe, within
recent years that one convicted of murder in England could take
an appeal to a higher court; though a controversy over pigs - or,
at any rate, the pasture on which they gathered acorns - could
always be carried up."
The great age of the Count - he seemed to be the representative
in the world of some vanished empire - gave his irony a certain
indirection. Everybody laughed. And he added: "Even your word
`murder,' I believe, was originally the name of a fine imposed by
the Danes on a village unless it could be proved that the person
found dead was an Englishman!
"I wonder when, precisely, the world began to regard it as a
crime to kill an Englishman?"
The parchment on the bones of his face wrinkled into a sort of
smile.
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