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It's only in rare moments, when a few men get together in the smoking-room, that the truth comes out. But when it does come out it's always the same refrain, 'cui bono, cui bono? I don't take much account of myself; but, if there is one thing of which I am proud, it is that I have never let myself be duped. From the earliest days I can remember I realized what the nature of this world really is.
While the community had been battling for civil and religious liberty, there had been a unifying, almost spiritualizing, influence in the sense of common injustice, and the question cui bono had been postponed. Drowning men do not ask if life is worth living.
The soil, more sympathetic than man, still points by its depression to the spot where each grave has been, but no other record, no token whatever, not even an enclosure. So that when the authorities sold back the field, they sold it along with all the dead that lay in part of it. Cui bono? The answer is in the words of the "Stranger" "Give something to the dead. "Give what? Respect."
I asked myself likewise, cui bono; a question I have always put to myself whenever any action of Napoleon was in discussion. I know that he will, without hesitation, do all the evil which can be of use to him for the least thing; but I do not always conjecture the lengths to which his prodigious egotism extends in all directions, towards the infinitely little, as well as the infinitely great.
"And why is not this publicly exposed?" "Cui bono! The presses that have no direct interest in the matter, would treat the affair with indifference or levity, while a few would mystify the truth.
Most of us are debarred from answering the "Cui Bono" bray, by the fact that our most helpful experiences are generally of a too intimate and often sacred nature to be given to a scoffing world. But this instance has the advantage of dealing entirely with material matters, and thus being on a level with the ordinary intelligence. Nobody can say in this case no good was done.
In the far distance an old man, tottering beneath his weight of years, stood leaning on a staff, reading a riddle propounded by a sullen sphinx, and striving with failing intellect to understand "Cui Bono?" Near by was an open grave, beside which an angel of mercy stood and beckoned him.
The title of the lecture is identical with that of our Society Cui Bono?" Brande came forward unostentatiously and placed a roll of paper on the reading-desk. I have copied the extracts which follow from this manuscript. The whole essay, indeed, remains with me intact, but it is too long and it would be immaterial to reproduce it all in this narrative.
And all-so I am Bengali a fearful man. 'God made the Hare and the Bengali. What shame? said Kim, quoting the proverb. 'It was process of Evolution, I think, from Primal Necessity, but the fact remains in all the cui bono. I am, oh, awfully fearful! I remember once they wanted to cut off my head on the road to Lhassa.
'I know not what to say about your going to sea, I fear observations on your resigning the ship abroad and taking one at home for the mere purpose of making up a little time. Pray think well of it. I daresay you would receive a civil answer, perhaps get a ship, but cui bono.
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