On the other side of the fireplace, in the horse-hair armchair where Mrs. Verloc's mother was generally privileged to sit, Karl Yundt giggled grimly, witha faint black grimace of a toothless mouth. The terrorist, as he called himself, was old and bald, with a narrow snow-white wisp of a goatee hanging limply from his chin. An extraordinary expression of underhand malevolence survived in his extinguished eyes. When he rose painfully the thrusting forward of a skinny groping hand deformed by gouty swellings suggested the effort of a moribund murderer summoning all his remaining strength for a last stab. He leaned on a thick stick, which trembled under his other hand.

"I have always dreamed," he mouthed, fiercely, "of a band of men absolute in their resolve to disregard all scruples in the choice of means, strong enough to give themselves frankly the name of destroyers, and free from the taint of that resigned pessimism which rots the world. No pity for anything on earth, including themselves, and death enlisted for good and all in the service of humanity, that's what I would have liked to see."

His little bald head quivered, imparting a comical vibration to the wisp of a white goatee. His enunciation would have been almost totally unintelligible to a stranger. His worn-out passion, resembling in its impotent fierceness the excitement of a senile sensualist, was badly served by a dried throat and toothless gums which seemed to catch the tip of his tongue. ...

... The famous terrorist had never in his life raised personally as much as his little finger against th social edifice. He was not man of action; he was not even an orator of torrential eloquence, sweeping the masses along in the rushing noise and foam of 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. ...