Bonnaire kept Ragu near him. But the table was a long one, for four

generations elbowed one another. When Bonnaire the patriarch looked

round he could see his son Lucien and his daughter-in-law Louise

Mazelle, both of whom were now over fifty. He could also see his

granddaughter Claudine and his grandson-in-law, Charles Froment, both

in their prime; and he could likewise see his great-granddaughter

Alice, a charming little maid, eight years of age. And all manner of

kith and kin followed. Bonnaire explained to Ragu that a gigantic table

would have been needed if his three other children, Antoinette, Zoé,

and Séverin, had not arranged to dine at other tables with their own

offspring. At dessert, however, they would bring the tables together

in a neighbourly fashion, in suchwise that they would end by being all

together.

Ragu more particularly turned his eyes upon Louise Mazelle, who still

looked very charming and active. He was no doubt surprised by the sight

of that daughter of the _bourgeoisie_, who invariably displayed so much

affection for her husband Lucien, the scion of a working-class stock.

Leaning towards Bonnaire, the old vagabond at last asked him in an

undertone: 'Are the Mazelles dead then?'

'Yes; the dread of losing their money killed them. The conversions

which upset everything and foreshadowed the approaching suppression

of Rentes altogether, fell upon them like so many thunderbolts. The

husband was the first to die, killed by the idea that his idle days

were over and that he would perhaps have to work again. Then the wife

dragged on for a while, cloistering herself at home and no longer

daring to go out, convinced as she was that as violent hands had been

laid on Rentes people must nowadays be murdered at every street-corner.

It was in vain that her daughter proposed to take her with her; she

stifled at the thought of being fed by others, and at last one day she

was found dead--stricken by apoplexy, her face quite black, and resting

among a package of her Rente certificates, which had virtually lost all

value. Poor people! They died in a state of stupefaction, absolutely

overcome, and declaring that the world had been turned topsy-turvy.'

Ragu wagged his head. He was not inclined to weep for those

_bourgeois_, but at the same time he was of opinion that a world whence

idleness was banished was not worth living in. Then he again looked

round him, and became yet gloomier as he noticed the rising spirits

of one and all, and the abundance and luxury which prevailed at the

table, though to the others those things were now only natural, and

gave no cause for vanity. The women were all arrayed in similar festive

garb, similar light, charming silks; and precious stones--rubies and

sapphires and emeralds--glittered in the hair of all. But the roses,

the superb roses, were preferred to the gems by far, for they lived,

and were therefore the more precious.

Already in the middle of the meal, which was made up of delicate and

simple viands, vegetables, and fruit especially, everything being

served on silver dishes, joyous songs began to arise, saluting the

setting sun and bidding it _au revoir_, in the certainty that in

a few hours' time it would happily arise again. And all at once,

amidst the singing, a delightful incident occurred. All the birds of

the neighbourhood--the robins, the blackcaps, the finches, even the

sparrows, flew down on the tables before retiring to rest among the

darkening greenery. They alighted boldly on one's shoulders, hopped

down to peck the crumbs on the cloth, and accepted dainties from the

hands of the children and the women. Since Beauclair had become a town

of concord and peace they had been aware of the change there; they no

longer feared aught from its kindly inhabitants--neither snares nor

gunshots. And they had grown familiar in their way; they formed part of

the various families; each garden had its denizens, who at meal-time

flew down to take their share of the common food.

'Ah! here are our little friends!' cried Bonnaire. 'How they chatter!

They know very well that to-day is a festival. Crumble some bread for

them, Alice!'

Ragu, with his face darkening and a dolorous expression in his eyes,

watched the birds as they flew down from every side, like a very

whirlwind of small light feathers to which the last sunbeams imparted

a golden glow. Those birds made the dessert quite lively, so many were

the little feet hopping jauntily among the cherries and the roses. And

of all the felicity and splendour that Ragu had witnessed since the

morning, nothing had so clearly and so charmingly told him how peaceful

and how happy was that young community. For him it was like a supreme

blow; he suddenly arose and said to Bonnaire: 'I'm stifling, I must

walk about. And besides, I want to see everything, all the tables, all

the people.'

Bonnaire understood him well. Was it not Luc and Josine whom he wished

to see? Was not all the ardent curiosity that he had displayed since

his return culminating in a desire to behold them? Still avoiding a

decisive explanation, Bonnaire answered: 'Very well, I will show you;

we will make the round of the tables.'

The first they reached--the one set out before the next house--was

that of the Morfains. Petit-Da presided over it beside his wife,

Honorine Caffiaux, both of them with snowy hair; and with them were

their son Raymond, their daughter-in-law Thérèse Froment, and their

eldest grandson, Maurice Morfain, a tall youth, nineteen years of age

already. Then, on the other side, came Achille Gourier's line, with

his widow, Ma-Bleue, whose large sky-blue eyes retained all their

intensity, though she was now nearly seventy years old. She would soon

be a great-grandmother, through her daughter Léonie, married to Séverin

Bonnaire, and her grandson, Félicien, born of that marriage, and lately

wedded to Hélène, the daughter of Pauline Froment and André Jollivet.

All were present, even both of the last named, who had come with their

daughter. And some of them were making merry with Hélène, suggesting

that if her firstborn should be a son he ought to be called Grégoire.

Meantime her sister Berthe, though she was scarcely fifteen, already

laughed at the soft things said to her by her cousin Raymond, thus

offering promise of another love-match in the future.

The arrival of Bonnaire was hailed with joyous acclamations. Ragu,

who was losing himself more and more amidst the tangle of matrimonial

alliances, particularly desired that the two Froments seated at this

table should be pointed out to him. They were two of Luc's daughters,

Thérèse and Pauline, both well on the road to their fortieth year,

but still displaying a bright and healthy beauty. Then, as the sight

of Ma-Bleue reminded Ragu of old Mayor Gourier and Sub-Prefect

Châtelard, he wished to know how they had ended. Bonnaire told him

that they had passed away, one a few days later than the other, after

spending their last years in close intimacy, linked together by the

loss of the beautiful Léonore. Gourier, the first to depart, had with

difficulty accustomed himself to the new state of things. He had often

raised his arms to heaven in astonishment at being an employer of

labour no longer; and he had been wont to talk of the past with all

the melancholy of an aged man, who, although he would willingly have

devoured the priests in former days, had actually begun to regret

the ceremonies of the Catholic Church, the First Communions and

processions, the incense and the pealing bells. Châtelard, on the other

hand, had gallantly fallen asleep in the skin of an Anarchist, for

such he had gradually become in the midst of his diplomatic reserve,

accomplishing his destiny such as he had wished it to be--living happy

and forgotten in the midst of that Beauclair which was now rebuilt

and triumphant--and at last disappearing in silence with the _régime_

whose funeral procession he had so complacently followed, he himself

swallowed up, as it were, in the collapse of the last ministry.

But there was a finer, a more noble, death to be mentioned, the death

of Judge Gaume, which was recalled by the presence at that table of his

grandson André and his great-granddaughters Hélène and Berthe. Alone

with his grandson, Gaume had lived to the age of ninety-two in all

the desolation of his spoilt and dolorous life. On the day, however,

when the law courts and the prison were closed, he had felt himself

in a measure delivered from the haunting torture of his career as a

judge. A man judging men, consenting to play the part of infallible

truth, absolute justice, in spite of all the possible infirmities of

his mind and his heart, the thought of it made Gaume shudder, filled

him with excessive scruples, dreadful remorse, terror lest he should

indeed have been a bad judge. However, the justice which he had

long awaited, which he had feared he might never see, had dawned at

last--not the justice of an iniquitous social system, reigning with the

sword, with which it defends a small minority of despoilers, and with

which it strikes the great multitude of wretched slaves, but justice as

between free man and free man--justice allotting to each his share of

legitimate happiness, and bringing in its train truth and brotherliness

and peace.

On the morning of the day he died Gauine sent for an old poacher

whom he had formerly condemned to a heavy punishment for killing a

gendarme who had dealt him a sabre stroke, and he publicly expressed

his contrition, and cried aloud all the doubts which had poisoned his

career. He proclaimed all the crimes of the Code, all the errors and

falsehoods of the Statutes, those weapons of social oppression and

hatred, those corrupt foundations of the social system whence spring

perfect epidemics of theft and murder.

'And so,' Ragu resumed, 'those young folk seated at that table, that

Félicien and his wife Hélène, at whose house we called this morning,

are at once the grandchildren of the Froments, the Morfains, the

Jollivets, and the Gaumes? But doesn't the blood of such enemies poison

those in whose veins it now flows?'

'No, indeed,' Bonnaire quietly replied, 'that commingling of blood

has brought reconciliation, and the race has acquired more beauty and

strength from it.'

Fresh bitterness awaited Ragu at the next table--that of Bourron, his

old chum, the boon companion of his days of sloth and drunkenness,

whom he had ruled and led astray so easily. The idea of it! Bourron

happy, Bourron saved, when he himself remained in his hell! In spite

of his many years Bourron did indeed look quite triumphant as he sat

there beside his wife Babette, she who had ever remained cheerful,

whose unchangeable hopes and optimism had found fulfilment without even

moving her to astonishment. Was it not natural? One was happy because

one always ends by being happy.

And around the Bourrons there had been no limit to the swarming of

offspring. There was first their eldest daughter, Marthe, who had

married Auguste Laboque and had given birth to Adolphe, who in his

turn had married Germaine, the daughter of Zoé Bonnaire and Nicholas

Yvonnot. There was next their son Sébastien, who had married Agathe

Fauchard, and had begotten Clémentine, who on her side had married

Alexandre Feuillat, the son of Léon Feuillat and of Eugénie Yvonnot.

The fourth generation proceeding from those two branches of Bourron's

family was already represented by two little girls, Simonne Laboque

and Amélie Feuillat, each of them in their fifth year. And by virtue

of the kinship established by marriage the party further included

Louis Fauchard, married to Julienne Dacheux, who had given him a

daughter, Laure; and Évariste Mitaine, married to Olympe Lenfant, by

whom he had had a son Hippolyte. Then there was the aforesaid Hippolyte

himself, now the husband of Laure Fauchard, and the father of a lad

in his eighth year, named François, in such wise that the fourth

generation was sprouting vigorously on this side also. Throughout

festive Beauclair one could not have found a larger table than that

where intermingled the descendants of the Bourrons, the Laboques, the

Bonnaires, the Yvonnots, the Fauchards, the Feuillats, the Dacheux, the

Lenfants, and the Mitaines.

Bonnaire, who here again found one of his own children, Zoé, gave

Ragu some particulars respecting those whom death had carried off.

Old Fauchard and his wife Natalie--he always in a state of stupor and

she always complaining--had gone off without understanding the great

changes which were taking place. Feuillat, on his side, had beheld

the triumph of his work, that vast estate of Les Combettes, ere he

departed. Lenfant and Yvonnot had lately followed him to their graves,

in that earth which was now loved with intelligence and fertilised with

virile power. And after the Dacheux, the Caffiaux and the Laboques,

those relics of the vanished trading system, the beautiful bakeress,

the good Madame Mitaine, had passed away full of years, kindliness, and

beauty.

But Ragu was no longer listening--he could not take his eyes from

Bourron. 'He looks quite young,' he muttered, 'and his Babette still

has her pretty laugh.'

He recalled the sprees of other days, Bourron and he lingering late in

Caffiaux's den, railing against the masters, and at last staggering

home, dead drunk. And he recalled his own long life of wretchedness,

the fifty years that he had squandered in rolling from workshop to

workshop through the world. To-day the experiment had been made and

made successfully. Work, reorganised and regenerated, had saved his

old chum when he was already half lost, whereas he, Ragu, had come back

annihilated by the old labour system, full of misery and suffering,

that iniquitous wage-system, which poisoned and destroyed.

All at once there came a charming incident which brought Ragu's anguish

to a climax. Simonne Laboque, the daughter of Adolphe and Germaine, a

fair-haired little maid about five years old, took some rose petals,

scattered over the table, in her chubby little hands, and smilingly

poured them over her great-grandfather's white head.

'There! grandpa Bourron, there you are, and there's some more! They're

to make you a crown. Oh! you've some in your hair, and in your ears,

and on your nose too. You've some everywhere! And _bonne fête, bonne

fête_, grandpa Bourron!'

The whole table laughed, applauded, and acclaimed the old man. But Ragu

fled, dragging Bonnaire with him. He was trembling, he could scarcely

remain erect. When they had got a little distance away, however, he

suddenly said to Bonnaire in a husky voice: 'Listen, what's the use of

keeping it back any longer? I only came to see _them_. Where are they?

Show them me!'

He was speaking of Luc and Josine; and, as Bonnaire, who had fully

understood it, delayed replying, he continued: 'You have been taking

me about ever since this morning and I have seemed to be interested in

everything, yet I can only think of them. It was the thought of them

indeed that brought me back here amidst so much fatigue and suffering.

I heard while I was far away that I hadn't killed him. They are both

still alive, are they not? They have had several children--they are

happy, triumphant, is that not so?'

Bonnaire was reflecting. For fear of a scandal he had hitherto delayed

the inevitable meeting. But had not his tactics succeeded? Had not

a kind of holy awe come over Ragu in presence of the grandeur of

the accomplished work? Bonnaire could tell that his companion was

quivering, distracted, too nerveless to think of committing another

crime. And so, with his air of serene good nature, he finished by

replying, 'You want to see them, my good fellow; well, I will show them

to you. And it's quite true, you will see happy folk.'

Luc's table came immediately after that of Bourron. He sat on one side

of it, in the centre, with Josine on his right, whilst on his left

hand were Sœurette and Jordan. Suzanne also was present, seated in

front of Luc; and near her Nanet and Nise had taken their places. They

in their turn would soon be great-grandparents, but their eyes still

laughed under their fair hair, which had now become somewhat paler

in hue, as in the distant days when they had looked like two little

toys--two little curly lambs. All around the table sat the younger

members of Luc's family. There was Hilaire, his eldest son, who had

married Colette, the daughter of Nanette and Nise, and had become the

father of Mariette, now nearly fifteen years of age. In like manner

from Paul Boisgelin and Antoinette Bonnaire had sprung Ludovic, who

would soon be twenty; and there was a promise of marriage between

Ludovic and Mariette, who dined side by side, spending much of their

time in whispering together, having little secrets of their own to

communicate. Then came Jules, the last of the Froments, who had married

Céline, the daughter of Arsène Lenfant and Eulalie Laboque; this pair

having a boy of six named Richard, a child of angelic beauty, the

particular favourite of his grandfather Luc. And afterwards followed

all the kinsfolk; this being the table where the blood of old-time

enemies was most closely blended, that of the Froments, the Boisgelins,

and the Delaveaus mingling with that of the Bonnaires, the Laboques,

and the Lenfants, the artisans, traders, and tillers of the soil; in

such wise that the whole social communion whence the new city, the

Beauclair of justice and peace, had sprung, was represented here.

At the moment when Ragu drew near to the table, a last ray of the

setting sun enveloped it as with a glory, and the clumps of roses, the

silver plate, the light silk gowns and the diamond-spangled hair of the

women coruscated amidst the splendour. But the most charming incident

that attended the orb's farewell was another flight of the birds of the

vicinity, who yet once again flew around the diners before retiring to

rest among the branches. There came such coveys and such a flapping of

little wings that the table was covered as with a snow of warm living

down. Friendly hands took hold of the birds, caressed them, and then

let them go. And the confidence thus displayed by the robins and the

finches was fraught with adorable sweetness. In that calm evening

atmosphere it seemed like a sign that an alliance was henceforth formed

between all creatures, that universal peace reigned at last between men

and animals and things.

'Oh, Grandpa Luc!' cried little Richard, 'just look, there is a

blackcap drinking water out of Grandma Josine's glass!'

It was true; and Luc, the founder of the city, felt both amused and

touched by it. The water came from those fresh and pure springs which

he had captured among the rocks of the Bleuse Mountains, and which

had given birth to the whole town of gardens and avenues and plashing

fountains. When the bird had flown away Luc took up the glass, and

raised it amidst the purple glow of the sunset, saying: 'Josine! we

must drink--we must drink to the health of our happy city!'

And when Josine, who all her life had remained an _amorosa_, a creature

of tender heart beneath her white hair, had laughingly moistened her

lips with the water, Luc in his turn drank of it and resumed, 'To the

health of our city, whose _fête_ it is to-day! May it ever increase and

spread, may it grow in liberty, prosperity, and beauty, and may it win

the whole world over to the work of universal harmony!'

In the last sunray, which set an aureola round his head, he looked

superb--still young even, overflowing with triumphant faith and joy.

Without pride or emphasis he simply expressed the delight he felt at

seeing his work so full of life and strength. He was the founder,

the creator, the father; and all those joyous people, all who sat at

those tables celebrating work and the fruitfulness of summer, were his

people, his friends, his kinsfolk, his ever-spreading, brotherly, and

prosperous family. An acclamation greeted the ardently loving wishes

which he offered up for his city, ascending into the evening air, and

rolling from table to table even to the most distant avenues. One and

all had risen to their feet, in their turn holding their glasses aloft

and drinking the health of Luc and Josine, the heroes, the patriarchs

of work; she, the redeemed one, glorified as spouse and as mother, and

he the saviour, who, to save her, had saved the whole wretched world of

the wage-earners from iniquity and suffering. And it was a moment full

of exaltation and magnificence, testifying to the passionate gratitude

of the vast throng for all the active faith which had been shown, and

proclaiming the community's final entry into the reign of glory and

love.

Ragu turned ghastly pale and trembled in all his limbs as that gust of

triumph swept by. He could not endure the sight of Luc and Josine, so

radiant with beauty and kindliness. He recoiled and staggered, and was

on the point of fleeing when Luc, who had noticed him, turned towards

Bonnaire.

'Ah! my friend, you were lacking to make my joy complete,' said he.

'You have ever been like my other self, the bravest, sturdiest, most

sensible artisan of our work, and people must not praise me without

praising you also. But who is that old man that I see with you?'

'He is a stranger.'

'A stranger! Let him approach then. Let him break with us the bread of

our harvests, and drink the water of our springs. Our city is a city

of welcome and peace for all men. Make room, Josine! And you, friend,

whom we do not know, come, seat yourself between my wife and me, for

we should like to honour in you all our unknown brothers of the other

cities of the world.'

But Ragu, as if seized with holy horror, retreated yet farther away.

'No, no, I cannot.'

'Why not?' Luc gently asked. 'If you come from afar, if you are weary,

you will here find helping and comforting hands. We ask you neither

your name nor your past. Here all is forgiven; brotherliness reigns

alone, in order that the happiness of all may produce the happiness

of each. And you, dear wife, repeat all that to him--the words will

come gently and convincingly from your lips, for it seems as if I only

frighten him.'

Thereupon Josine herself spoke: 'Here! my friend,' said she, 'here is

our glass, why should you not drink our health and your own? You come

from afar, and you are a brother, in you we shall have the pleasure of

still enlarging our family. It is a custom at Beauclair now, on days of

festival, to exchange a kiss of peace which effaces everything. Take

this glass and drink, for the love of all!'

But Ragu again recoiled, paler and trembling more violently than

before, stricken with terror indeed as at some idea of sacrilege: 'No,

no, I cannot!'

Did Luc and Josine at that moment suspect the truth, did they recognise

the wretched man who had returned merely to experience fresh suffering

after so long dragging about with him his destiny of sloth and

corruption? As they looked at him an expression of deep sadness came

into their eyes which had beamed so kindly. And by way of conclusion

Luc simply said: 'Go then, since you desire it, since you cannot

belong to our family, at the hour when it is drawing yet more closely

together, pressing around on all sides, hand in hand. Look! it is

mingling, tables are joining tables, and soon there will be but one

board for the whole of our city of brothers!'

This was true; the people were gathering together in neighbourly

fashion--each table seemed to set out on the march towards the next

one, in such wise that they all met and joined, as invariably happened

at the close of that repast in honour of the festival of Summer. And

it was all quite natural, the children at first served as messengers,

going from table to table, for there was a tendency among the scattered

members of particular families to gather together and seat themselves

side by side. How could Séverin Bonnaire, who sat at the table of the

Morfains, Zoé Bonnaire, who sat at that of the Bourrons, and Antoinette

Bonnaire, who sat at that of Luc, help feeling drawn towards the

paternal table, where their elder brother Lucien had his place? And was

it not natural that the Froments, scattered like the seed corn which

one casts into different furrows--Charles being among the Bonnaires,

Thérèse and Pauline among the Morfains--should desire to join their

father, the founder and creator of the city? Thus one beheld the

tables marching and uniting together in such wise that not a break

soon remained along the avenues, before the doors of the gay houses.

The paschal feast of that brotherly people was about to continue under

the stars, in a vast communion, all being seated elbow to elbow, at

the same board, among the same scattered rose petals. The whole city

thus became a gigantic banqueting-hall, the families were blended into

one, the same spirit animated every breast, and the same love made

every heart beat. Meantime from the far-spreading pure heavens fell a

delightful, sovereign peace, the harmony of spheres and men.

Bonnaire had not intervened, but he had kept his eyes on Ragu, watching

for the change that he expected after that day of surprises which, one

by one, had shaken the wanderer until at last he was terrified and

transported by that final blaze of glory. At last realising that he

was sorely stricken, and tottering, Bonnaire gave him his hand. 'Come,

let us walk a little,' he said, 'the evening air is so mild. And tell

me, do you now believe in our happiness? Surely you must now see that

one may work and at the same time be happy. Indeed, joy and health

and perfect life are to be found in work. To work is to live. And only

a religion of suffering and death could have made work a curse, and

eternal sloth the happiness of heaven! Work is not our master, it is

the breath of our lungs, the blood of our veins, the one sole reason

why we love and create and form immortal humanity!

But Ragu, as if exhausted by fatigue, weary unto death amidst his

defeat, ceased arguing: 'Oh, leave me, leave me,' said he. 'I am only

a coward, a child would have had more courage, and I hold myself in

contempt.' Then in a whisper he went on: 'I came to kill them both.

Ah! that never-ending journey, the roads that followed the roads,

the years of roaming through unknown lands with one rageful thought

in my heart--that of returning to Beauclair, of finding that man and

that woman once more, and of planting in their flesh the knife I had

used so clumsily! But you met me, amused me, and just now I trembled

before them, and retreated like a coward, when I saw them looking so

beautiful, so great, so radiant!'

Bonnaire shuddered on hearing that confession. Already on the previous

night he had apprehended a crime. But now, at the sight of the woeful

wretch's collapse, he felt stirred by pity. 'Come, come, you unhappy

being,' he exclaimed, 'come and sleep again to-night at my house.

To-morrow we'll see----'

'Sleep again at your house! Oh! no, no! I'm going, I'm going at once!'

'But you cannot start off at this hour--you are too tired, too weak.

Why won't you stay with us? You will become calmer, you will know our

happiness.'

'No, no! I must start at once, at once. The potter said the truth, I'm

not of the sort to make one of you.' And like some damned and tortured

wretch full of suppressed wrath Ragu added: 'Your happiness--why, I

can't bear the sight of it! It would make me suffer too much!'

Bonnaire then ceased to insist; secret horror and uneasiness had come

over him also. In silence he led Ragu to his house again, and the

other, unwilling even to wait till the end of the meal, took up his

wallet and his staff. Not a word was exchanged between them, not even a

gesture of farewell. Bonnaire watched the miserable old man go off with

tottering steps, and vanish at last, far away in the night, which was

gradually falling.

It was impossible, however, for Ragu to lose sight of festive Beauclair

in a moment. He slowly went up the Brias gorge, and at each step

climbed higher and higher among the rocks of the Bleuse Mountains.

Before long he was above the town, the whole of which on turning round

he once more beheld. The sky, of a dark yet pure blue, was glittering

with stars. And, beneath the sweetness of the lovely June night, the

town spread out like another stretch of sky, swarming, as it were, with

innumerable little planets--the thousands and thousands of electric

lamps which had just been lighted on the banquet tables and amidst

the greenery. Once more then Ragu beheld those tables, outlined, so

to say, with fire, and thus emerging victoriously from the darkness.

They spread along without end till they filled the whole space below

him. And he could hear laughter and singing arising, and still and ever

behold that giant festival of a whole people, gathered together at

table in one sole brotherly family.

Then he once more sought to flee the sight, and ascended still higher;

but when he next turned round, he again saw the city glowing yet more

brightly than before. He went higher still, he ever and ever climbed

upward, but at each further ascent, each time that he turned round

the city seemed to have grown, till at last it spread over the entire

plain, becoming like the very heavens with its infinite expanse of

sombre blue and glittering stars. The sounds of laughter and of song

reached him more and more distinctly; it was as if the whole great

human family were celebrating the joy of work, upon the fruitful earth.

Then, for the last time, he again set out, and walked for hours and for

hours until he became lost in the darkness.

V

Yet other years rolled by, and death, necessary death, the good

helpmate of eternal life, performed his work, carrying off one by one

those who had accomplished their tasks. Bourron was the first to go,

followed by his wife Babette, who retained her good humour to the last.

Then came the turn of Petit-Da and that of Ma-Bleue, whose blue eyes

partook of the infinite of the blue heavens. Lange died too, whilst

putting the finishing touch to a last little figure, a delightful

barefooted girl, the very image of the Barefeet he had loved. Then

Nanet and Nise went off, exchanging a last kiss, whilst still young;

and finally Bonnaire succumbed like a hero amidst the stir of work one

day when he had repaired to the factory to see a new giant hammer,

whose every stroke forged a great piece of metal-work.

Of all their generation, of all the founders and creators of triumphant

Beauclair, Luc and Jordan alone remained, loved and surrounded with the

affectionate attentions of Josine, Sœurette, and Suzanne. It seemed

as if the three women, whose health and courage in their old age were

marvellous, lived on simply to be the helpmates and nurses of the men.

Since Luc had scarcely been able to walk, his legs gradually failing

him till he was almost fastened to his arm-chair, Suzanne had come to

reside in his house, lovingly sharing with Josine the glory of waiting

upon him. He was more than eighty now, of unchangeable gaiety and in

full possession of his intelligence--quite young indeed, as he said

with a laugh, had it not been for those wretched legs of his which

were becoming like lead. And in the same way Sœurette did not quit her

brother Jordan, who now never left his laboratory, but worked there in

the day-time and slept there at night. He was Luc's elder by ten years,

and had retained at ninety the slow and methodical activity to which he

was indebted for the accomplishment of such a vast amount of work--ever

seemingly on the point of expiring, but introducing such logic and such

well-reasoned determination into his labour, that he was still working

when the sturdiest toilers of his generation had long been sleeping in

the grave.

He had often said in his weak little voice: 'People die because they're

willing; one doesn't die when one still has something to do. My health

is very bad, but all the same I shall live to a good old age, I shall

only die on the day when my work is finished. You'll see, you'll see!

I shall know when the time has come, and I will warn you, my good

friends, saying: "Good-night, my day's over, I'm going to sleep now."'

Thus Jordan still worked because in his estimation his work was not yet

finished. He lived on, wrapped in rugs; his drinks were warmed in order

that he might not catch cold, and he took long rests on a couch between

the brief hours which he was able to devote to his researches. Two or

three such hours sufficed him, however, for the accomplishment of a

considerable amount of work, in such a methodical manner did he exert

himself. Sœurette, all attention and abnegation, was like his second

self, at once a nurse, a secretary, and a preparator, allowing nobody

to approach and disturb him. On the days, moreover, when his hands were

too weak for any exertion, it was she who carried out his thoughts for

him, becoming as it were a prolongation of his own life.

To Jordan's thinking his work would only be completed when the new

city's supply of beneficent electricity should be as unlimited as the

inexhaustible water of the rivers, or the air which one can breathe

in all freedom. During the past sixty years he had accomplished a

great deal of work tending to that solution. He had diminished the

cost of electricity by burning coals when they quitted the pit, and

then despatching the electric force he obtained by cable to numerous

factories. And after long researches he had devised a new appliance by

which he even transformed the calorical energy contained in coal into

electrical energy, without mechanical energy having to be employed.

He had in this manner done away with boilers, which meant a saving of

more than fifty per cent, in the cost price. The dynamos being charged

direct, by the simple combustion of the coal, he had been able to work

his electrical furnaces cheaply and well, revolutionise metallurgy, and

provide the town with an abundance of electricity for all social and

domestic purposes. Nevertheless, in his opinion it still remained too

costly; he wished to have it for nothing, like the passing breeze which

is at the disposal of all. Besides, a fear had come to him, born of

the possibility--in fact, the certainty--that the coal mines would in

time become exhausted. Before another century perhaps coal would fail

one; and would not that mean the death of the world, the cessation of

all industry, the suppression of the chief means of locomotion--mankind

reduced to immobility, a prey to the cold, like some big body whose

blood has ceased to circulate? It was with growing anxiety that Jordan

saw each ton of coals burnt; that made a ton the less, he often said.

And although he was so puny, feverish, racked by coughing, already with

one foot in the grave, he incessantly tortured his mind in thinking of

the catastrophe which threatened the future generations. He vowed that

he would not die until he should have presented those generations with

a flood of power, a flood of endless life, which would prove the source

of their civilisation and their happiness. Thus he had set to work

again, and for more than ten years already he had been working on the

problem.

In the first instance Jordan had naturally thought of the waterfalls.

They constituted a primitive mechanical force which had been employed

successfully in mountain regions in spite of the capriciousness

of the torrents, and the interruptions which dry seasons brought

about. Unfortunately, the few watercourses still to be found in the

Bleuse Mountains--apart from the springs utilised for the town's

water-supply--did not possess the necessary energy. And, besides, no

mountain spring would ever yield such a constant, regular, and abundant

motive power as was necessary for his great design. Jordan therefore

thought of the tides, the continual flux and reflux of the ocean, whose

power, ever on the march, beats against the coasts of the continents.

Scientists had already given attention to the tides, and he turned to

their researches and even devised some experimental appliances. The

distance of Beauclair from the sea was not an obstacle, for electrical

force could already be transmitted without loss over considerable

distances. But another idea haunted him, and gradually took complete

possession of him, throwing him into a prodigious dream, full of the

thought that if he could bring it to fulfilment he would give happiness

to the whole world.

Puny and chilly as he was, Jordan had always evinced a passion for the

sun. He often watched it pursuing its course. With a quivering fear of

the spreading darkness he saw it set at evening, and at times he rose

early in the morning in order that he might have the joy of seeing

it appear again. If it should be drowned in the sea; if it should

some day never reappear, what endless, icy, deadly night would fall

upon mankind! Thus Jordan almost worshipped the sun, regarding it as

something divine, the father of our world, the creator and regulator,

which after drawing beings from the clay, had warmed them, helped them

to develop and spread, and nourished them with the fruits of the earth,

throughout an incalculable number of centuries. The sun was the eternal

source of life since it was the source of light, heat, and motion. It

reigned in its glory like a very powerful, very good, and very just

king, a necessary god, without whom there would be nothing, and whose

disappearance would bring about the death of all things. This being

so, Jordan asked himself why should not the sun continue and complete

his work? During thousands of years it had stored its beneficent heat

away in the trees of which coal was made. During thousands of years

the earth had preserved in its bosom that immense reserve stock of

heat, which had come to us like a priceless gift at the hour when our

civilisation needed new splendour. And it was to the all-helping sun

that one must again apply, it was the sun which would continue giving

to that which it had created, the world and man, increase of life, and

truth, and justice, all the happiness indeed of which one had dreamt

so long. Since the sun vanished each evening, since it disappeared

at winter-time, one must ask it to leave us a plentiful share of its

blaze, in order that one might without suffering await its return at

dawn, and take patience during the cold seasons. The problem was at

once a simple and a formidable one; it was necessary to address oneself

direct to the sun, capture some of the solar heat, and by special

appliances transform it into electricity, of which immense quantities

must be stored in air-tight reservoirs. In this fashion one would

always have an unlimited source of power, of which one might dispose as

one pleased. The rays would be harvested during the scorching days of

summer, and stored away in endless granaries. And when the nights grew

long, when winter arrived with its darkness and its ice, there would

be light and warmth and motion for all mankind. That electrical power,

ravished from the all-creating sun and domesticated by man, would then

at last prove his docile and ever-ready servant, relieving him of much

exertion, and helping him to make of work not only gaiety and health,

and just apportionment of wealth, but the very law and cult of life.

The dream which possessed Jordan had already occupied other minds.

Scientists had succeeded in devising little appliances which

captured solar heat and transformed it into electricity, but in

infinitesimal quantities, the instruments being suited merely for

laboratory experiments. It was necessary to be able to operate on a

large scale, and in a thoroughly practical manner, in order to fill

the huge reservoirs which would be needed for the requirements of a

whole nation. For years, then, Jordan was seen superintending the

building--in the old park of La Crêcherie--of some strange appliances,

species of towers, whose purpose could not be divined. For a long

while he would not speak out, but kept the secret of his researches

from everybody. In fine weather, during the hours when he felt strong

enough, he repaired with the short, slow step of a weak old man to

the new works which he had set up, and shut himself up inside them

with some chosen men. And in spite of repeated failures he clung to

his task, wrestled with it, and ended by overcoming the sovereign

planet--he, the little hard-working ant, whom too hot a sunray would

have killed. Never was there greater heroism, never did the pursuit

of an idea afford the spectacle of a loftier victory over the natural

forces--forces which yesterday had been deadly thunderbolts for man,

and which to-day were conquered, subjected to his service. He succeeded

in solving the problem, the great and glorious sun parted with some

little of that inexhaustible glow with which, never cooling, it has

warmed the earth through so many centuries. After some final trials new

works were definitively planned and erected, and supplied Beauclair

throughout a whole year with as much electricity as its inhabitants

required, even as the springs of the mountains supplied them with

water. Nevertheless, an annoying defect was observed: the loss from the

reservoirs remained very large, and some last improvements had to be

devised, a means of storing without fear of diminution the necessary

winter reserve of power, in such wise that another sun, as it were,

might be lighted above the town throughout the long cold nights of

December.

Again did Jordan set to work. He sought, he struggled still, resolved

upon keeping alive until his task should be completed. His strength

declined, he was at last unable to go out, and had to rest content with

sending his orders to the works respecting the final, long-debated

ameliorations. In this fashion several months went by. Shut up in his

laboratory he there perfected his work, resolved to die there on the

day when this work should be ended. And that day arrived: he found a

means of preventing all loss, of rendering his reservoirs absolutely

impermeable, capable of holding their store of electric force for a

long period. And then he had but one desire--to bid farewell to his

work, embrace his friends, and return again into universal life.

The month of October had come, and the sun was still gilding the last

leaves with warm, clear gold. Jordan requested Sœurette to have him

carried in an arm-chair, for the last time, to the works where the new

reservoirs had been installed. He wished to gaze upon his creation, to

make sure that enough sunshine was stored away to enable Beauclair to

wait for the return of spring. And so one delightful afternoon he was

taken to the works, and spent two hours in them, inspecting everything

and regulating the action of the appliances. The works were built at

the very foot of the Bleuse Mountains, in a part of the old park which

looked towards the south, and which had formerly been an overflowing

paradise of fruit and flowers. There were towers rising above large

buildings with long roofs of steel and glass, but nothing connected

with the work could be seen from the outside, for all the conducting

cables passed underground.

At last, by way of finishing his visit, Jordan bade his bearers halt

for a moment in the central courtyard, where he gave a long supreme

glance around him at that nucleus of a new world, endowed with the

source of eternal life, his creation, the passion of his whole life.

And finally he turned towards Sœurette, who, never quitting him, had

followed his arm-chair step by step. 'Well,' said he with a smile,

'it's finished, and it seems quite satisfactory; so now I can go off.

Let us return to the house, sister.'

He was very gay, radiant like a toiler who thinks that he will at

last be able to rest since his work is done. However, his sister,

hoping that he might benefit by the sunshine, told the men carrying

the arm-chair not to hurry, but to go back to the house by a somewhat

roundabout way. And thus it happened that on emerging from one of the

paths Jordan suddenly found himself in front of the pavilion where Luc

still dwelt, reduced like his friend to immobility, since he had lost

the use of his legs. For some months now the two friends had not seen

one another. They could only correspond, obtain news of each other

through their dear nurses, their guardian angels, who were ever coming

and going between them. And a final desire, the last desire of his

heart, suddenly upbuoyed the sinking Jordan.

'Oh! sister, I beg you,' said he, 'let them stop and place my chair

yonder, under that tree, at the edge of the tall grass. And go up to

Luc at once and tell him that I am here, at his door, waiting for him.'

Sœurette hesitated for a moment, feeling somewhat anxious at the

thought of all the emotion which such an interview would bring with it.

'But Luc is like yourself, my friend,' she said, 'he cannot stir. How

would you have him come downstairs?'

The gay smile which revived the brilliancy of Jordan's eyes, again

appeared upon his face.

'My bearers will carry him down, sister,' he replied. 'Since I have

come so far in my arm-chair he can surely come here in his.' And he

added tenderly: 'It is so pleasant here, we can have a last chat

together, and bid one another goodbye. How can we part for ever without

embracing?'

It was impossible for Sœurette to refuse his request any longer, so

she went into the pavilion for Luc. Jordan waited quietly amidst the

caress of the declining sun; and his sister soon returned, announcing

that his friend was coming. Deep was the emotion when Luc appeared,

likewise carried by the men in his arm-chair. He was brought towards

the greenery, followed by Josine and Suzanne, who did not leave him.

At last the bearers deposited him near Jordan, the chairs touching one

another, and the two friends were then able to press each other's hands.

'Ah! my good Jordan, how much I thank you,' said Luc; 'how kind of you

to have thought of bringing us together in order that we might see one

another again and bid one another a last good-bye!'

'You would have done the same, my dear Luc,' Jordan answered. 'As I was

passing and you were there it was natural that we should meet for the

last time on this grass, under one of our dear trees, whose shade we

have loved so well.'

The tree under which they sat was a big silvery lime-tree, a superb

giant that had already shed its leaves. But the sunshine still gilded

it delightfully, and the golden dust of the planet fell in a warm rain

athwart its branches. The evening too was exquisite, an evening of

intense peacefulness, fraught with the sweetest charm. A broad sun ray

enveloped the two old men as with a loving splendour, whilst the three

women, standing in the rear, watched over them with solicitude.

'Just think of it, my friend!' Jordan resumed. 'For so many years

past whilst we have been pursuing parallel tasks, our lives have been

mingled. I should have gone off full of remorse if I had not again

excused myself for having placed such little faith in your work when

you first came to me and asked my help to build the future city of

Justice. I was at that time convinced that you would encounter defeat.'

Luc began to laugh: 'Yes, yes, as you said, my friend, political,

economical, and social struggles were not your business. No doubt

there has been much futile agitation among men. But was one to abstain

on that account from taking part in what went on, was one to allow

evolution to take place as it listed, and refrain from hastening the

hour of deliverance? All the compromises--often necessary ones--all the

base devices to which the leaders of men have stooped, have had their

excuse in the double march which they have at times helped mankind to

effect.'

Jordan hastily interrupted him: 'You were right, my friend,' said he,

'and you have proved it magnificently. Your battle here has created,

hastened the advent of a new world. Perhaps you have snatched a

hundred years from human wretchedness. At all events this new town of

Beauclair, where more justice and happiness now flower, proclaims the

excellence of your mission, the beneficent glory of your achievement. I

am with you entirely, you see, in mind and in heart, and I do not wish

to quit you without telling you once more how thoroughly you won me

over to your work, and with what growing affection I watched you whilst

you were realising so many great things. You were often an example for

me.'

But Luc protested: 'Oh! do not let us speak of any example of mine,

my friend. It was you who ever gave me one, the loftiest, the most

magnificent! Remember my lassitude, my occasional attacks of weakness,

whereas I always found you erect, endowed with more courage, more and

more faith in your work, even on the days when everything seemed to

be crumbling around you. That which made you invincible was that you

believed solely in work, in which, alone, you set health and the one

reason for living and doing. And your own work became your very heart

and brain, the blood pulsing in your veins, the thought ever on the

alert in the depths of your mind. Your work alone existed for you,

building itself up with all the life that you bestowed on it, hour by

hour. And what an imperishable monument, what a gift of splendour and

happiness you will leave to mankind! I might never have been able to

carry out my own work, as a builder of towns, and leader of men, and at

all events it would as yet be as nothing, had it not been for yours.'

Silence fell, and some birds flew by, whilst through the bare branches

of the lime-tree the autumn sunshine streamed more gently as evening

advanced. Sœurette, in her motherly fashion, became anxious, and drew

Jordan's rug over his knees, whilst Josine and Suzanne bent over Luc,

fearing lest he should tire himself.

But the latter replied to Jordan: 'Science remains the great

revolutionary. You told me so at the outset, and every forward step

in our long lives has shown me how right you were. Would our town of

Beauclair, now all comfort and solidarity, have been possible as yet

if you had not placed at its disposal that electrical power which has

become the necessary agent of all work, all social life? Science,

truth, will alone emancipate man, make him master of his destiny, and

give him sovereignty over the world by reducing the natural forces to

the status of obedient servants. Whilst I was building, my friend, you

gave me what was needed to infuse life into my stones and mortar.'

'It is true, no doubt, that science will free man,' Jordan quietly

replied in his weak little voice, 'for at bottom truth is the one

powerful artisan of fraternity and justice. And I'm going off, feeling

well pleased with myself, for I've just paid my last visit to our

factory, and it is working now as I desired it to work, for the relief

and felicity of all.'

He went on giving explanations and instructions respecting the working

of the new appliances, the employment of those reservoirs of force, as

if indeed he were dictating his last will and testament to his friend.

Electricity already cost nothing, and was so abundant that it might be

given to the inhabitants of Beauclair in whatever measure they desired,

like the streams whose flood was inexhaustible; like the air which came

freely from the four corners of the heavens. And given in this wise

electricity was life.

In every public edifice and private house, even the most modest, light,

heat, and motive power were distributed without counting. It was only

necessary to turn on a few switches and the house was illumined and

warmed, food was cooked, and various trade and household appliances

were set working. All sorts of ingenious little mechanisms were being

invented for household requirements, relieving women of the work which

they had formerly done, substituting mechanical action for manual toil.

In a word, from the housewife to the factory-worker, the ancient human

beast of burden had been altogether relieved of physical exertion and

useless suffering; a subjugated and domesticated natural force now

replacing the old-time toilers and performing all the work allotted

to it, in silence and cleanliness, with merely an attendant to check

its action. And this also meant relief and freedom for the mind, a

moral and intellectual rise for every brain, hitherto weighed down by

excessive work, badly apportioned and fraught with savage iniquity

for the greater number of the disinherited, whom it had plunged in

ignorance, baseness and crime. And it was not slothful idleness that

now reigned in the place of excessive toil, but work into which more

freedom and conscience entered; man really becoming the king of work,

devoting himself to the occupations he preferred, and creating more

truth and beauty according to his tastes, after the few hours of

general work which he gave to the community. And meantime also the

unhappy domestic animals, the sad-looking horses, all the beasts used

for draught, burden, and servitude were freed from the carts they had

been compelled to drag, the millstones they had turned, the loads they

had carried, and were restored to happy life in the fields and the

woods.

But the purposes for which the electric force could be used were

innumerable, and each day brought with it some fresh benefit. Jordan

had invented some lamps of such great power that two or three sufficed

to illumine an avenue. Thus the dream of lighting another sun above

Beauclair at night-time would assuredly be fulfilled. Some huge and

splendid glass houses had also been erected, in which by means of an

improved system of heating, flowers, vegetables, and fruits could be

easily grown at all seasons. The town was full of them, they were

distributed broadcast, and winter, like night, ceased to exist.

Moreover, transport and locomotion were facilitated more and more,

thanks to the free motive power which was applied to an infinity of

vehicles, bicycles, carriages, carts, and trains of several coaches.

'Yes, I am going off feeling well pleased,' Jordan repeated with serene

gaiety. 'I've done my own work, and the general task is sufficiently

well advanced to allow me to fall asleep in all peacefulness. To-morrow

the secret of aerial navigation will be discovered, and man will

conquer the atmosphere even as he conquered the oceans. To-morrow he

will be able to correspond from one to the other end of the earth

without wire or cable. Human speech, human gesture will dart round

the world with the rapidity of lightning. And that indeed, my friend,

is the deliverance of the nations by science, the great invincible

revolutionary, who will ever bring them increase of peace and truth.

You yourself long ago obliterated the frontiers, so to say, by your

rails, your railway lines which have extended further and further,

crossing rivers, transpiercing mountains, gathering the nations

together in a closer and closer network of intercourse. And what will

it be when one capital can chat in friendly fashion with another,

however far away, when the same thought at the same minute occupies

the attention of distant continents, and when the balloon cars travel

freely through the infinite, man's common patrimony, without knowing

aught of customs' tariffs? The air which we all breathe, that space

which is the property of all, will prove a field of harmony, in which

the men of to-morrow will assuredly become reconciled. And this is

why you have always seen me so composed, my friend, so convinced of

final deliverance. Men might do all they could to devour one another,

religions might pile error upon error in order to retain their

domination, but science was taking a step forward every day, creating

more light, more brotherliness, more happiness. And by the irresistible

force of truth it will at last sweep away all the dark and hateful

past, liberate the minds of men, and draw their hearts closer and

closer together under the great and beneficent sun, the father of us

all.'

Jordan was growing tired, and his voice became very faint. Nevertheless

he laughed again as he concluded: 'You see, my friend, I was as much of

a revolutionist as you.'

'I know it,' Luc replied with affectionate gentleness. 'You have

been my master in all things. I shall never be able to thank you

sufficiently for the admirable lesson of energy you gave me by your

superb faith in work.'

The sun was now fast declining, and a light quiver had passed between

the branches of the great lime-tree, whence fell the planet's golden

dust, now of a paler hue. Night approached, and a delightful stillness

spread slowly over the tall herbage. The three women, still standing

there, silent and attentive, full of respect for that supreme

interview, nevertheless became anxious, and gently intervened. However,

as Josine and Sœurette covered Luc, in his turn, with a rug, he said to

them: 'I don't feel cold, the evening is so beautiful.'

But Sœurette turned to glance at the sun, which was about to disappear

from the horizon, and Jordan following her glance, exclaimed: 'Yes,

night is falling. But the sun may go to bed now--it has left some of

its beneficence and power in our granaries. If it now sets the meaning

is that my day is over. I am going to sleep. Good-bye, my friend.'

'Good-bye, my friend,' Luc rejoined; 'I shall soon go to sleep also.'

This was their farewell, full of poignant affection, simple yet

wondrous grandeur. They knew that they would never more see one

another, and they exchanged a last glance and spoke a few last words.

'Good-bye, my friend,' Jordan repeated. 'Do not be sad, death is good

and necessary. One lives again in others, one remains immortal. We have

already given ourselves to others, we have worked for them only, and

we shall be born again in them, and thus enjoy our share of our work.

Goodbye, my friend.'

Then Luc once again repeated: 'Good-bye, my friend, all that will

remain of us will tell how much we loved and hoped. Each is born for

his task, that is the sole reason of life; nature brings a fresh being

into the world each time that she needs another workman. And when his

day's work is over, the workman can lie down, the earth will take him

again for other uses. Good-bye, my friend.'

He leant forward, for he wished to embrace Jordan; but he was unable

to do so until the three affectionate women came to the help of both

of them, sustaining them whilst they exchanged that last embrace. They

laughed at it like children, they were full of gaiety and serenity at

that moment of separation, feeling neither regret nor remorse, since

they had done all their duty, all their work as men. And they had no

fears, no terror of the morrow of death, certain as they were of the

deep quietude in which good workmen slumber. They exchanged a long and

very tender embrace, putting all the strength that remained to them

into that last kiss.

'Good-bye, my dear Jordan.'

'Good-bye, my dear Luc.'

Then they spoke no more. The silence became intense and holy. The sun

disappeared from the great heavens, vanishing behind the vague and

distant horizon. A bird perched on the lime-tree ceased singing, and

delicate shadows stole over the branches, whilst the lofty herbage, and

all the park with its clumps of trees, its paths and its lawns, sank

into the delightful quietude of twilight.

Then, at a sign from Sœurette, the bearers took up Jordan's chair, and

slowly, gently carried him away. Luc had asked that he might be allowed

to remain under the tree a little longer, and as he still sat there he

watched his friend going off along a broad, straight pathway. At one

moment Jordan looked round, and a last glance and a half-stifled laugh

were exchanged. Then all was over, Luc saw the arm-chair disappear,

whilst the park was invaded by the gathering gloom. And Jordan, on

returning to his laboratory, went to bed there; and even as he had said

to Luc--his work being done, his day being ended--he let death take

him, dying on the morrow very peacefully, with a smile upon his lips,

in Sœurette's loving arms.

Luc was destined to live five years longer in that arm-chair of

his which he seldom quitted, and which was placed near a window of

his room whence he could see his city spreading and growing day by

day. A week after Jordan's death Sœurette came to join Josine and

Suzanne, and from that day forward all three women encompassed Luc

with their loving attentions. During the long hours which he spent

gazing upon his happy city he often lived through the past again. He

once more saw his point of departure, the distant night of insomnia

when he had taken up a little book in which the doctrines of Fourier

were set forth. And Fourier's ideas of genius: the honouring, the

utilisation, the acceptance of the human passions as the very forces

of life; the extrication of work from its prison, its ennoblement,

its transformation into something attractive, into a new social code,

liberty and justice being gradually won by pacific means, thanks to a

confederation of capital, work, and brain power--all those ideas of

genius had suddenly illumined Luc's mind and prompted him to action on

the very morrow. It was to Fourier that he was indebted if he had dared

to make that experiment at La Crêcherie. The first common-house with

its school, the first bright clean workshops, the first dwelling-houses

with their white walls smiling amidst the greenery, had all sprung

from Fourierist ideas, ideas which had been left slumbering like

good grain in winter fields, ever ready to germinate and flower.

Even like Catholicism, the Religion of Humanity might need centuries

to be firmly established. But what an evolution afterwards, what a

continuous broadening of principles as love grew and the city spread!

By proposing combination between capital, work, and brain power as an

immediate experiment, Fourier, the evolutionist, a man of method and

practicability, virtually led one first to the social organisation of

the Collectivists, and afterwards even to the Libertarian dream of the

Anarchists. In that association capital gradually became annihilated,

and work and intelligence became the only regulators and basis of the

new social compact. At the end lay the disappearance of ordinary

trade, and the suppression of money, the first a cumbersome cogwheel

levying toll and consuming energy, the second a fictitious value, which

became useless in a community in which all contributed to produce

prodigious wealth, that circulated in continual exchanges. And thus,

starting with Fourier's experiment, the new city was fated to transform

itself at each fresh advance, marching on to more and more liberty and

equity, and conquering on its way all the socialists of the various

hostile sects, the Collectivists and even the Anarchists, and finally

grouping them in a brotherly people, reconciled amidst the fulfilment

of their common ideal, the kingdom of heaven set at last upon the earth.

And that was the admirable spectacle which Luc ever had before his

eyes, a spectacle summed up in that city of happiness whose bright

roofs spread out among the trees before his window. The march which

the first generation, imbued with all the ancient errors, spoilt

by iniquitous surroundings, had begun so painfully, amidst so many

obstacles and so much hatred, was pursued with a joyous easy step

by the ensuing generations which the new schools and workshops had

created. They were attaining to heights which had once been declared

inaccessible. Thanks to continuous change, the children and the

children's children seemed to have hearts and brains different from

those of their forerunners, and brotherliness became easy to them in a

community in which the happiness of each was virtually compounded of

the happiness of all.

With trade, theft had disappeared. With money, all criminal cupidity

had vanished. Inheritance no longer existed, and so no more privileged

idlers were born, and men no longer butchered each other to benefit

by somebody's will. What was the use of hating one another, of being

envious of one another, of seeking to acquire somebody's property

by ruse or force, when the public fortune belonged to one and all,

each being born, living and dying, in as good circumstances as his

neighbour? Crime became senseless, idiotic, and the whole savage

apparatus of repression and chastisement, instituted to protect

the thefts of a few rich beings from the rebellion of the wretched

multitude, had fallen to pieces like something useless, gendarmes

and law courts and prisons alike being swept away. Living among that

people who knew not the horrors of war, who obeyed the one law of work,

with a solidarity simply based upon reason and individual interest,

properly understood, a people, too, saved from the monstrous falsehoods

of religion, well informed, knowing the truth and bent on justice,

one realised how possible became the alleged 'utopia' of universal

happiness. Since the passions, instead of being combated and stifled,

had been cultivated like the very forces of life, they had lost all

criminal bitterness, and had become social virtues, a continuous

flowering of individual energies. Legitimate happiness lay in the

development and education of the five senses and the sense of love. The

long efforts of mankind ended in the free expansion of the individual,

and in a social system satisfying every need, man being man in his

entirety, and living life in its entirety also. And the happy city had

thus secured realisation in the practice of the religion of life, the

religion of humanity freed from dogmas, finding in itself its _raison

d'être_, its end, its joy, and its glory.

But Luc particularly beheld the triumph of Work, the saviour, creator,

regulator of the world. He had at the very outset desired to destroy

the iniquitous wage-system, and had dreamt of a new compact which would

allow of a just apportionment of wealth. But what a deal of ground it

had been necessary to traverse! In this respect again the evolution

had started from Fourier, for to him could be traced the association

of workers, the varied, attractive, limited labour of the workshops,

the groups of workers forming successive series, parting to meet again

and mingling with all the constant play of free organs--the play of

life itself. The germs of the Libertarian Commune may be found in

Fourier, for if he repudiated brutal revolution, and began by making

use of the existing mechanism of society, his doctrines tended in

their result to that society's destruction. No doubt the wage-system

had long lingered at the works of La Crêcherie, passing through

various stages of association, division of profits, a percentage of

interest in the common toil. At last it had been transformed in such

a manner as to satisfy the Collectivists, realising their formula, a

regulated circulation of 'vouchers for work.' Nevertheless it still

remained the wage-system, attenuated, disguised, but refusing to die.

And the doctrine of the Libertarian Commune alone had swept it away

in the course of a last advance, that of deliverance by liberty and

justice in their entirety, that chimera of other days, that unity and

harmony which now really lived. At present no authority remained, the

new social compact was based solely on the bond of necessary work,

accepted by all, and constituting both law and cult. An infinity of

groups practised it, starting with the old groups of the building,

clothing, and metal trades, the industrial workers and the tillers

of the soil, but multiplying and varying incessantly, in such wise

as to be adapted to all individual desires as well as to all the

needs of the community. Nothing hindered individual expansion, each

citizen formed part of as many groups as he desired, passed from the

cultivation of the soil to factory work, gave his time as best suited

his faculties and his desires. And there was no longer any contention

between classes, since only one class existed, a whole nation of

workers, equally rich, equally happy, educated to the same level, with

no difference either in attire, or in dwelling-place, or in manners and

customs. Work was king, the only guide, only master, and only deity,

instinct with sovereign nobility, since it had redeemed mankind when it

was dying of falsehood and injustice, and had restored it to vigour and

to the joy of life, and to love, and to beauty.

Luc laughed gaily when the morning breeze wafted towards him all

the sonorous gaiety of his city. How good, easy, and delightful was

the work performed there! It lasted only a few hours each day, and

so much of it, the most delicate as well as the mightiest task, was

performed by the new machinery which completed man's conquest of

nature and loaded him with wealth and abundance. Freed from long hours

of rough toil, man was the better able to exert his mind; art and

science soared; the level of current mentality was ever rising; great

intelligence ceased to be an exception, and men of genius sprang up in

crowds.

The science of alimentation had already been revolutionised by

chemistry, the earth might have yielded no more wheat, no more olives,

no more grapes, and yet enough bread, oil, and wine for the whole city

would have come from its laboratories. In physics, in electricity

especially, fresh inventions were ever and ever enlarging the domain

of the possible, and endowing men with the power of gods, knowing all,

seeing all, and capable of all. Then came the flight of art, the growth

and diffusion of beauty in every respect, an extraordinary florescence

of all the arts, now that the soul of the multitude throbbed in every

soul, and that life was lived with all its passions freed, love

given and received in its entirety. Inspired by the universal loving

kindness, music became the very voice of the happy people, through and

for whom musicians found the most sublime chants, in whose continual

harmony theatres, workshops, dwellings, and streets were ever steeped.

And for the people architects built vast and superb palaces, made in

its own image, of a size and a majesty at once varied and yet all one,

like the multitude itself, all the charming variations of thousands

of individualities finding expression in them. Then sculptors peopled

the gardens and museums with living bronze and marble; and painters

decorated the public edifices, the railway stations, the markets,

the libraries, the theatres, and the halls for study and diversion

with scenes borrowed from daily life. Writers moreover gave to that

innumerable people, who all read them, vast, strong, and powerful

works, born of them, created for them. Genius expanded, acquiring fresh

strength from increase of knowledge and freedom among the community;

never before had it displayed such splendour. The narrow, cramped,

aristocratic, hot-house literature of the past had been swept away by

the literature of humanity, poems overflowing with life, which all had

helped to create with their blood, and which returned to the hearts of

all.

Full of serenity, without fear for the future, Luc watched his town

growing like a beautiful being, endowed with eternal youth. It had

descended from the Brias gorges, between the two promontories of

the Bleuse Mountains, and was now spread over the meadow-land of La

Roumagne. In fine weather its white house-fronts smiled amidst the

verdure without a single puff of smoke besmirching the pure atmosphere,

for there were no chimneys left, electricity having everywhere replaced

coal and wood for heating purposes. The light silk canopy of the

broad blue sky spread over all, immaculate, without a speck of soot.

Thus in aspect the town remained a new one, bright and gay under the

refreshing breezes, whilst on all sides one heard the carolling of

water, the crystalline streaming of springs, whose purity brought

health and perpetual delight. The population steadily increased, fresh

houses were built, fresh gardens were planted. A happy people, free

and brotherly, becomes a centre of attraction, and thus the little

towns of the neighbourhood, Saint-Cron, Formerie, and Magnolles, had

found it necessary to follow the example of Beauclair, and had ended

by becoming so many prolongations of the original city. It had been

sufficient to make an experiment on a small scale, and by degrees

the _arrondissement_, the department, the whole region was won over.

Irresistible happiness was on the march, and nothing will be able to

withstand the force of happiness when men possess a clear and decisive

perception of it. Mankind has known but one struggle through the ages,

the struggle for happiness, which is to be found beneath every form of

religion, every form of government. Egotism is merely an individual

effort to acquire the greatest possible sum of happiness for self;

and why should not each set his egotism in treating his fellows as

brothers when he becomes convinced that the happiness of each rests

in the happiness of all? If there was contention between different

interests in the past, it was because the old social pact opposed them

one to the other, making warfare the very soul of society. But let it

be demonstrated that work reorganised will apportion wealth justly, and

that the passions, playing freely, will lead to harmony and unity, and

then peace will at once ensue, and happiness will be established in

a brotherly contract of solidarity. Why should one fight one against

the other, when interests cease to clash? If all the desperate,

pain-fraught exertions of generations, the prodigious sum of efforts,

blood, and tears that mankind has given to mutual slaughter throughout

so many centuries, had only been devoted to the conquest of the world,

the subjugation of the natural forces, man would long since have been

the absolute, happy sovereign of creatures and things. When humanity

at last became conscious of its imbecile dementia, when man ceased to

be wolfishly inclined towards his brother, and resolved to devote some

of the genius and wealth hitherto squandered in mutual annihilation,

to the common work of happiness, the mastery of the elements, on that

day the nations first started on their march towards the happy city.

And no! it is not true that a nation having its every need satisfied,

having to battle no longer for existence, would thereby gradually lose

the strength it requires to live, and sink into torpor and catalepsy.

The human dream will always be without a limit, there will always

remain much of the Unknown to be conquered. Each time a new craving is

contented, desire will give birth to another, the satisfaction of which

will exalt men and make them heroes of science and beauty. Desire is

infinite, and if men long battled together in order to steal happiness

one from the other, they will battle side by side to increase it, to

make it an immense banquet, resplendent with joy and glory, vast enough

to satiate the passions of thousands of millions of human creatures.

And there will be only heroes left, and each fresh child born into the

world will receive as his birthgift the whole earth, the unbounded

expanse of heaven, and the paternal sun, the source of immortal life.

As Luc gaily contemplated his triumphant town he often repeated that

love alone had created all the prodigies he beheld. He had sown the

seed, and now he reaped inexhaustible harvests of kindliness and

brotherliness. At the very outset he had felt that it was necessary to

found his city by and for woman if it was to prove fruitful and for

ever desirable and beautiful. Woman saved--Josine set in her due place

of beauty, dignity, and tenderness--was not that the symbol of the

future alliance, the union of the sexes, ensuring social peace, and

free and just life in common? Then, too, the new system of education,

the sexes being reared together and acquiring the same knowledge, had

brought them to a complete understanding, and made them sincerely

desirous of attaining to the one object of life, that object which was

reached by loving a great deal in order that one might be loved a great

deal in return. True wisdom lay in creating happiness, it was thus

that one logically became happy oneself. And now love chose freely; no

law, mutual consent alone, regulated marriage. A young man, a young

girl had known one another since their schooldays, had passed through

the same workshops together, and when they bestowed themselves one

on the other, that bestowal was simply like the florescence of their

long intimacy. They gave themselves to one another for life, long and

faithful unions predominating; they grew old together, even as they had

grown up together, in a bestowal of their whole beings, their rights

being equal, their love equal also. Yet their liberty remained entire,

separation was always possible for those who ceased to agree, and their

offspring remained with one or the other, as they decided, or when

difficulties supervened in the charge of the community. The bitter duel

of man and woman, all the questions which had so long set the sexes one

against the other, like savage, irreconcilable enemies, came to an end

in that solution: woman free in all respects, woman the free companion

of man, resuming her position as an equal, as an indispensable factor

in the union of love. She had a right to abstain from marrying, to

live as a man, to play a man's part as far as she desired, if she

chose; but why should she deny desire, and set herself apart from

life? Only one thing is sensible and beautiful, and that is life in

its entirety. And so the natural order of things had come about, peace

was signed between the reconciled sexes, each finding happiness in the

happiness of a common home tasting at last all the delights of the bond

of love, which was freed from the baseness of pecuniary and social

considerations. One could no longer sell himself for the other's dowry,

families could no longer barter their sons and daughters like mere

merchandise.

Thus the fulness of love reigned in the community. The sense of love,

developed and purified, became the perfume, the flame, the focus of

existence. It was widespread, general, universal love, springing from

the mated couple, and passing to the mother, the father, the children,

the relations, the neighbours, the citizens, the men and women of the

whole world in ever-broadening waves, a sea of love which ended by

bathing the entire earth. Loving kindness was like the pure air on

which every breast fed; there remained but one breath of brotherly

affection, and that alone had at last brought about the long-dreamt-of

unity, the divine harmony. Humanity--equilibrated like the planets, by

force of attraction, by the law of justice, solidarity and love--would

henceforth journey happily through the eternal infinite. And such was

the ever-recurring harvest, the immense harvest of tenderness and

kindliness, which Luc each morning saw arising from all sides; from

all the furrows which he had sown so abundantly; from his entire city,

where for so many years he had cast the good seed by the handful into

the schools, into the workshops, into every home, and even into every

heart.

'Look! look!' he said with a laugh some morning when Josine, Sœurette,

and Suzanne remained near his arm-chair before the open window. 'Look,

there are trees which have flowered since last night, and it seems as

if kisses were winging their flight, like song-birds, from some of the

roofs. There, yonder, both on the right and on the left, love flaps his

wings, as it were, in the rising sunlight.'

The three women joined in his laughter, and jested in a tender way to

please him. 'Certainly,' Josine would say, 'on that side, above that

house with the blue tiles spangled with white stars, there is a great

quiver of the sunlight, telling of internal rapture. That must be the

house of some newly-wedded pair.'

'And straight before us,' said Sœurette, 'see how the window-panes are

flashing with the splendour of a rising planet, in that house-front

where the faïence ornaments are decorated with roses! Assuredly a child

has been born there.'

'And on all sides, over all the dwellings, over the whole town the rays

are pouring,' said Suzanne in her turn. 'They form sheaves of wheat, a

field of prodigious fertility. Is it not the peace springing from the

love of all that grows and is harvested there each day?'

Luc listened to them with rapture. What a delightful reward was that

which he himself had won from love, which had surrounded him with the

sublime affection of those three women, whose presence filled his

last days with perfume and brilliancy! They were full of solicitude,

infinitely good, infinitely loving, with serene eyes which ever

brought him joy in life, and gentle hands which sustained him to the

very threshold of the grave. And they were very old and quite white,

light and aerial like souls, like gay, active, pure flames, glowing

with youthful, eternal passion. He lived on; and they lived on also,

and were like his force, his activity and intelligence, healthy and

strong as they were in spite of everything, coming and going for him

when he himself could no longer move, like guardians, housewives, and

companions, who prolonged and broadened his life far beyond the usual

limits.

At seventy-eight years of age Josine remained the _amorosa_, the Eve,

who had long ago been saved from error and suffering. Extremely slim,

suggesting a dry, pallid flower that had retained its perfume, she

had preserved her supple gracefulness, her delicate charm. In the

bright sunlight her white hair seemed to recover some of its golden

hue, the sovereign gold of youth. And Luc adored her still, as on

the distant day when he had succoured her, setting in his love for

her his love for the whole suffering people, for all tortured women;

choosing her, indeed, as the most wretched, the most dolorous, in

order that with her--should he save her--he might likewise save all

the disinherited of the world whom shame and hunger were clutching

at the throat. Even nowadays it was religiously that he kissed her

mutilated hand, the wound dealt by iniquitous labour, in the prison

of the wage-system, from which his compassion and love for her had

helped him to extricate the workers. He had not remained unfruitful in

his mission of redemption and deliverance; he had felt the need of

woman, the necessity of being strong and complete in order to redeem

his brothers. It was the mated couple, the fruitful spouse, that had

given birth to the new people. When she had borne him children his work

itself had begun to create, had become lasting. And on her side she

likewise adored him, with the adoration of their first meeting, a flame

of tender gratitude, a gift of her whole person, a passion and a desire

for the infinite of love, whose inextinguishable flame age had not

weakened.

Sœurette, born the same year as Luc, her eighty-fifth birthday being

near at hand, was the most active of the three women, on her feet,

busy the whole day long. It had long seemed as if she had ceased to

grow older. Small of frame, shrunken even, she had nevertheless been

beautified by gentle age. So dark, so thin, so graceless in former

times, she had become a delightful little old woman, a little white

mouse, whose eyes were full of light. Long ago, in the distressing

crisis of her love for Luc, amidst her grief at loving and remaining

unloved, her good brother Jordan had told her that she would become

resigned, and would sacrifice her passion to the love of others.

And each day she had indeed become more and more resigned, her

renunciation proving at last a source of pure joy, a force of divine

delight. She still loved Luc, she loved him in each of his children

and grandchildren, with whom she had long assisted Josine. And she

loved him with a deeper and deeper love, freed from all egotism, a

chaste flame, that glowed with sisterly affection and motherliness.

The delicate attentions, the discreet comforts which she had lavished

on her brother, were now bestowed on her friend. She was always on the

watch, in order to make his every hour delight. And all her happiness

lay in that: to feel how greatly he himself was attached to her, to end

almost a century of life in that passionate friendship, which was as

sweet as love itself.

Suzanne, now eight-and-eighty years of age, was the eldest, the most

serious, the most venerable of the women. Slender of figure, she

remained upright, showing a tender countenance, whose only charm, as

in days before, rested in its expression of kindliness, indulgence,

and sterling good sense. But nowadays she could scarcely walk, and her

compassionate eyes alone expressed her craving to interest herself in

others and expend her strength in good work. As a rule she remained

seated near Luc, keeping him company, whilst Josine and Sœurette

quietly and attentively trotted around them. She, on her side, had

loved Luc so tenderly in her sad younger days, loved him with a

consoling love, of which she had long remained ignorant. She had given

herself without knowing it amidst her dream of a hero whom she would

have liked to encourage, assist with her affection. And on the day when

her heart had spoken, the hero was already in another's arms, and only

room for a friend remained at his hearth. She had been that friend for

numerous years now, and had found perfect peace in the communion of

heart and mind in which she had lived with the man who had become her

brother. Doubtless, too, as in the case of Sœurette, if that friendship

proved so delightful, it was because it had sprung from a brasier of

love, and retained its eternal fire.

Thus Luc, very aged, glorious, and handsome, lived his last days

encompassed by the love of those three women, who also were very old,

glorious, and beautiful. His eighty-five years had failed to bend his

lofty figure, he remained healthy and strong, save for that stiffening

of his legs which kept him at his window like a happy spectator of the

city he had founded. His hair had not fallen from above his lofty,

towering brow, it had simply whitened, surrounding his head with a

great white mane, like that of some old, resting lion. And his last

days were brightened and perfumed by the adoration with which Josine,

Sœurette, and Suzanne surrounded him. He had loved all three of them,

and still loved them with that vast love of his, whence flowed so much

desire, so much brotherliness and kindness. But signs appeared. As with

Jordan, no doubt, the work being done, Luc was soon to die. Somnolence

came over him, like a foretaste of the well-earned repose whose advent

he awaited with joyous serenity. It was with good spirits that he saw

death approaching, for he knew it to be necessary and gentle, and he

had no need of any mendacious promise of a heaven in order to accept

it with a brave heart. Heaven henceforth was set upon the earth,

where the greatest possible sum of truth and justice realised the

ideal, the entirety of human happiness. Each being remained immortal

in the generations born of him, the torrent of love was increased by

each fresh love that came into being, and rolled and rolled along,

assuring eternity to all who had lived, loved, and created. And Luc

knew that, although he might die, he would continually be born anew in

the innumerable men whose lives he had desired to see improved, more

fortunate. That was the only certainty of survival, and it brought him

delightful peace. He had loved others so much, and had expended his

strength so much for the relief of their wretchedness, that he found

reward and beatitude in falling asleep in them, in profiting himself by

his work in the bosom of generations which would ever become happier

and happier.

Anxious though they felt at seeing him thus gently sinking, Josine,

Sœurette, and Suzanne did not wish to be sad. They opened the windows

every morning in order that the sun might enter freely, they decorated

and perfumed the room with flowers, huge nosegays possessing all

the brightness and aroma of youth. And knowing how attached Luc was

to children, they surrounded him with a joyous party of little lads

and lassies, whose fair and dark heads were like other nosegays--the

flowery to-morrow, the strength and beauty of the years to come. And

when all those little folk were present, laughing and playing around

his arm-chair, Luc smiled at them tenderly and watched their play with

an air of amusement, enraptured at heart at departing amidst such pure

delight, such living hope.

Now, on the day when death, very just and very good, was to come upon

Luc with the twilight, the three women, who divined its approach by

the expression in the clear eyes of the grand old man, sent for his

great-grandchildren, the very little ones, those who would set the most

childhood, the most future promise around him in his last moments.

And these children brought others, playmates and so forth, some of

them their elders, and all of them descendants of the workers by whose

solidarity and exertion La Crêcherie had formerly been founded. It was

a charming spectacle, that sunlit room full of children and roses,

and the hero, the old lion with the white mane, still cheerfully and

lovingly taking an interest in the little ones. He recognised them all,

named them, and questioned them.

A tall lad of eighteen, François, the son of Hippolyte Mitaine and

Laure Fauchard, strove to restrain his tears as he looked at him.

'Come and shake hands with me, my handsome François,' said Luc. 'You

must not be sad, you see how cheerful we all are. And be a good man.

You have grown taller lately, you will make a superb sweetheart for

some charming girl.'

Then came the turn of two girls of fifteen, Amélie, the daughter of

Alexandre Feuillat and Clémentine Bourron, and Simonne, the daughter

of Adolphe Laboque and Germaine Yvonnot. 'Ah! you at least are gay,

my pretty ones,' said Luc, 'and it is right that you should be so.

Come and let me kiss you on your fresh cheeks, and be always gay and

beautiful, for therein lies happiness.'

Then he only recognised his own descendants, whose number was destined

to multiply without cessation. Two of his grandchildren were present,

a granddaughter aged eighteen, Alice, who had sprung from Charles

Froment and Claudine Bonnaire, and a grandson of sixteen, Richard, who

had sprung from Jules Froment and Céline Lenfant. Only the unmarried

grandchildren had been invited, for the room could not have held the

married ones with their wives and families. And Luc laughed yet more

tenderly as he called Alice and Richard to him. 'Sly fair Alice,' said

he, 'you are of an age to marry now. Choose a lad who is joyous and

healthy like yourself. Ah! is it done already? Then love one another

well, and may your children be as healthy and joyous as you are.--And

you Richard, my big fellow, you are about to begin your apprenticeship

as a bootmaker, I hear, and you also have a perfect passion for music.

Well, work and sing, and be a genius!'

But at this moment he was surrounded by a stream of little ones. Three

boys and a girl, all of them his grandchildren, tried to climb upon

his knees. He began by taking the eldest, a boy of seven, Georges, the

son of a pair of cousins, Maurice Morfain and Berthe Jollivet, Maurice

being the son of Raymond Morfain and Thérèse Froment, whilst Berthe was

one of the daughters of André Jollivet and Pauline Froment.

'Ah! my dear little Georges, the dear little grandson of my two

daughters--Thérèse the brunette, and Pauline the blonde. Your eyes

used to be like my Pauline's, but now they are becoming like those

of my Thérèse. And your fresh and laughing mouth, whose is that? Is

it Thérèse's or Pauline's? Give me a good kiss, a good kiss, my dear

little Georges, so that you may remember me for a long, long time.'

Then came the turn of Grégoire Bonnaire, who was barely five years

old. He was the son of Félicien Bonnaire and Hélène Jollivet; Félicien

having sprung from Séverin Bonnaire and Léonie Gourier, and Hélène

being the daughter of André Jollivet and Pauline Froment.

'Another of my Pauline's little men!' said Luc. 'Eh, my little

Grégoire, isn't grandmamma Pauline very kind, hasn't she always

plenty of nice things in her hands? And you love me, too, your

great-grandpapa, don't you, Grégoire? And you will always wish to be

good and handsome when you remember me, eh? Kiss me, give me a good

kiss.'

By way of conclusion he took up the two others, Clément and Luce,

brother and sister, one on his right and the other on his left knee.

Clément was five and Luce two years old. They were the children of

Ludovic Boisgelin and Mariette Froment. But at the thought of Ludovic

and Mariette a host of memories arose, for he was the son of Paul

Boisgelin and Antoinette Bonnaire, and she, the daughter of Hilaire

Froment and Colette, the eldest child of Nanet and Nise. The Delaveaus,

the Boisgelins, the Bonnaires mingling with the Froments, were born

anew in those pure brows, that light and curly hair.

'Come, little Clément, come little Luce, my pets,' said Luc. 'If you

only knew all that I recognise, all that I read in the depths of your

bright eyes. You are already very good and strong, little Clément, I

know it well, for grandfather Hilaire has told me, and is well pleased

to hear you always laughing! And you, little Luce, my little mite who

can scarcely talk, one knows that you are a brave little girl, for you

never cry, but gaily stretch your chubby little hands towards the good

sun. You also must kiss me, my beautiful well-loved children, the best

of myself, all my strength and all my hope!'

The others had drawn near, and he would have liked to have had arms

long enough to embrace and press every one of them to his heart. It was

to them that he confided the future, that he bequeathed his work as to

new forces which would ever enlarge it. He had always relied on the

children, the future generations, to complete the work of happiness.

And those dear children who had sprung from him and by whom he was so

lovingly surrounded in the serene peacefulness of his last hour, what a

testament of justice, truth, and kindness he left them, and with what

intense passion he appointed them the executors of his will, his dream

of humanity freed more and more, and dwelling together in happiness!

'Go, go, my dear children! Be good, very good, and very just with one

another! Remember that you all kissed me to-day; and always love me

well, and love each other well also! You will know everything some day,

you will do as we have done, and it will be for your children to do

as you do. Let there be plenty of work, plenty of life, and plenty of

love! Meantime, my dear children, go and play, and keep full of health

and gaiety!'

Josine, Sœurette, and Suzanne then wished to send the joyous band home,

for fear of a noise, as they could see that Luc was growing weaker and

weaker. But he would not consent to this--he desired that the children

might remain near him, in order that he might gently depart amidst the

joyous sounds of their laughter. It was then arranged that they should

play in the garden under his window. He could thus hear and see them,

and felt well pleased.

The sun--a great summer sun which made the whole town resplendent--was

already sinking on the horizon. It gilded the room as with a glory,

and Luc, seated in his arm-chair amidst that splendour, long remained

silent, gazing the while far away. Josine and Sœurette, silent like

himself, came and leant one on his right, the other on his left, whilst

Suzanne, seated close by, appeared to be sharing his dream. At last,

in a voice which seemed to become more and more distant, he slowly

said: 'Yes, our town is yonder. Regenerated Beauclair scintillates in

the pure atmosphere, and I know that the neighbouring towns--Brias,

Magnolles, Formerie, and Saint-Cron--have followed us, won over by our

example to the cause of all-powerful happiness. But what is becoming

of the world beyond the horizon, on the other side of the Bleuse

Mountains, and beyond the great dim plain of La Roumagne--what point

have the provinces and nations reached in the long struggle, the

difficult and bloody march towards the happy city?'

Again he became silent, full of thought. He was aware that the

evolution was in progress everywhere, spreading each hour with

increasing speed. From the towns the movement had gained the provinces,

then the whole nation, and then the neighbouring nations; and

there were no more frontiers, no more insurmountable mountains and

oceans--deliverance flew from continent to continent, sweeping away

governments and religions and uniting races. However, things did not on

all sides take the same course. Whilst the evolution, in the form of

a slow advance towards the conquest of every liberty, had progressed

at Beauclair without too much battling, thanks to the experiment of

association made there, on other sides it was revolution which had

broken out, and blood had flowed amidst massacre and conflagration. No

two neighbouring states indeed had taken the same road; it was after

following the most varied and contrary paths that the nations were to

meet at last in one and the same fraternal city, the metropolis of the

human federation.

And Luc, as in a dream, repeated in his failing voice: 'Ah! I should

like to know--yes, before quitting my work I should like to know how

far the great task has now advanced. I should sleep better; I should

carry yet more certainty and hope away with me.'

Silence fell again. Josine, Sœurette, and Suzanne, very old, very

beautiful, and very good, were, like himself, still dreaming, with

their glances wandering afar.

It was at last Josine who began: 'I have heard of things--a traveller

told them me,' she said. 'In one great Republic the Collectivists

became the masters of power. For years they had waged the most

desperate of political battles in order to gain possession of the

legislature and the government. And as they were unable to do so in

legal fashion, they had recourse to a _coup d'état_ when they felt

strong enough for one, and certain of substantial support among the

nation. On the morrow, by laws and decrees, they put their entire

programme into force. Expropriation _en masse_ began, all private

wealth became the wealth of the nation, all the instruments of

work reverted to the workers. No landowners, nor capitalists, nor

employers were left; the State reigned alone, master of everything,

both landowner and capitalist and employer, regulator and distributor

of social life. But, of course, that tremendous shock, those sudden

radical changes, could not take place without terrible troubles

arising. The classes would not allow themselves to be dispossessed even

of property they had stolen, and there were frightful outbreaks on all

sides. Landowners preferred to get killed on the threshold of their

estates. Other people destroyed their property, flooded mines, broke up

railroads, annihilated factories and goods, whilst capitalists burnt

their scrip and flung their gold into the sea. Certain houses had to

be besieged, whole towns had to be taken by assault. That frightful

civil war lasted for years, and the pavements of the towns became red

with blood, whilst the rivers still and ever carried corpses to the

ocean. Then the sovereign State experienced all sorts of difficulties

in getting the new order of things to work smoothly. An hour's work

became the standard of value, exchanges being facilitated by a system

of vouchers. At first a statistical commission was established to

watch over production and distribute products in accordance with each

person's amount of work. Then other controlling offices were found

necessary, and little by little an intricate organisation grew up,

impeding the working of the new social system. People fell into a kind

of regimentation and barrack life; never had men been penned up in

smaller compartments. And yet evolution was taking place, even this was

a step towards justice; for work rose to honour once more, and wealth

was each day divided with more equity. At the end, assuredly, there lay

the disappearance of the wage-system and of capital--the suppression

of trade and money. And I have been told that this Collectivist State,

ravaged by so many catastrophes, deluged with so much blood, is

to-day entering the sphere of peace, coming at last to the fraternal

solidarity of the free, working nations.'

Josine ceased speaking, and again relapsed into a mute contemplation

of the great horizon. But Luc gently replied: 'Yes, that was one of

the bloody paths, one of those which I would not follow. But now, what

matters it, since it has led them to the same unity, the same harmony

as our own?'

Then Sœurette, still gazing far away, as if exploring the world behind

the gigantic promontories of the Bleuse Mountains, in her turn took

up the tale: 'I also heard a story--some eye-witnesses told me these

frightful things. They happened in a vast neighbouring empire where

the Anarchists by means of bombs and shrapnel succeeded in blowing

up the old social framework. The people had suffered so dreadfully

that they ended by leaguing themselves with the Anarchists in order

to complete the liberating work of destruction, and sweep away the

last crumbs of the rotten world. For a long time the cities flared

like torches in the night, amidst the howling of the old butchers of

the people, who in their turn were now being slaughtered, and who did

not wish to die. And this was the prophesied deluge of blood, the

fruitful necessity of which had long been foretold by the prophets of

Anarchy. Afterwards the new times began. The cry was no longer: "To

each according to his work," but: "To each according to his needs."

Man had a right to life, lodging, clothing, and daily bread. So all

the wealth was heaped together and divided, people only being rationed

when there was a lack of abundance. But with all mankind at work, and

nature exploited scientifically and methodically, there must come

incalculable produce, an immense fortune, sufficient to satisfy the

appetites of all. When the thieving and parasitic society of olden time

had disappeared, together with money, the source of all crimes, and the

savage laws of restriction and repression which had been the sources

of every iniquity, peace would reign in the Libertarian community, in

which the happiness of each would be derived from the happiness of all.

And there was to be no more authority of any kind, no more laws, no

more government. If the Anarchists had accepted iron and fire as their

instruments, believing in the sanguinary necessity of extermination as

a first step, it was because they were convinced that they could not

utterly destroy monarchical and religious atavism, and for ever crush

the last surviving germs of authority, unless the ancient sore should

be thus brutally cauterised. In order that one might not be caught

in the toils again it was necessary to sever every living link with

a past of error and despotism. All politics were evil and poisonous,

because they were fatally compounded of compromises and bargains, in

which the disinherited were duped. And the lofty, pure dream of Anarchy

had sought realisation when the old world had been ruined and swept

away. That dream was the broadest and the most ideal conception of a

just and peaceful human race, man free in a free state of society, and

each man delivered from every hindrance and shackle, living in the

full enjoyment of all his senses and faculties, fully exercising his

right to live and to be happy through his share in the possession of

all the wealth of the earth. But then, Anarchy had gradually become

merged into the Communist evolution, for in reality it was only a

form of political negation, and simply differed from other kinds of

socialism by its determination to throw everything down before building

up afresh. It accepted association, the constitution of free groups

living by exchanges, constantly circulating, expending their strength

and reconstituting themselves, like the very blood of the human body;

and thus the great empire where it triumphed amidst massacre and

conflagration, has now joined the other freed nations in the universal

federation.'

Sœurette ceased speaking and remained motionless and dreamy, with her

elbow resting on the back of Luc's arm-chair. He, whose voice was

thickening, slowly said: 'Yes, the Anarchists, after the Collectivists,

were bound to follow the disciples of Fourier on the last day on

reaching the threshold of the promised land. If the roads were

different, the goal remained identical.' And after thinking a while he

resumed: 'Yet, how many tears, how much blood, how many abominable wars

there have been in order to win that fraternal peace which all equally

desired! How many centuries of fratricidal slaughter have followed one

after the other when the question was simply whether one ought to turn

to right or left in order to reach happiness more quickly!'

Then Suzanne, who hitherto had remained silent, and whose eyes also

had been wandering beyond the horizon, at last spoke in a voice which

quivered with compassion: 'Ah! the last war, the last battle! It was

so frightful that when it was over men for ever destroyed their swords

and their guns. It took place during the earlier stage of the great

social crises which have renewed the world, and I was told of it by

men who had well nigh lost their senses amidst that supreme shock of

the nations. In that crisis which distracted them, whilst they were

pregnant with the future, one-half of Europe rushed upon the other

half, and other continents followed them, and fleets of ships battled

on all the oceans for dominion over water and earth. Not a single

nation was able to remain apart, in a state of neutrality, they all

dragged one another forward; and two immense armies entered into

line, glowing with hereditary fury, and resolved upon exterminating

one another, as if out of every two men there was one too many in the

empty, barren fields. And the two huge armies of hostile brothers

met in the centre of Europe, on some vast plains where millions of

beings had space to murder one another. Over leagues and leagues did

the troops deploy, followed by reinforcements; such a torrent of men,

indeed, that the battle lasted for a month. Each day that dawned there

still remained human flesh for bullets and shells. The combatants did

not even take time to remove their dead; the piles of corpses formed

walls, behind which new regiments ever advanced in order to get killed.

And night did not stay the battle, men murdered one another in the

darkness. Each time that the sun arose it illumined yet larger pools

of blood, a field of carnage where death in his horrible harvesting

piled the corpses of the soldiers in loftier and loftier ricks. And on

all sides there was lightning, entire army corps disappeared amidst a

clap of thunder. It was not necessary that the combatants should draw

near or even see each other, their guns carried long miles, and threw

shells which in exploding swept acres of ground bare, and asphyxiated

and poisoned all around. Balloons also threw bombs from the very

heavens, setting towns ablaze as they passed. Science had invented

explosives and murderous engines which carried death over prodigious

distances, and annihilated a whole community as suddenly as an

earthquake might have done. And what a monstrous massacre showed forth

on the last evening of that gigantic battle! Never before had such a

huge human sacrifice smoked beneath the heavens! More than a million

men lay there in the great ravaged fields, alongside the watercourses,

across the meadows. One could walk for hours and hours, and one ever

met a yet larger harvest of slaughtered soldiers, who lay there with

their eyes wide open, and their black mouths agape, as if to cry aloud

that mankind was mad! And that was the last battle, to such a degree

did horror freeze every heart when men awakened from that frightful

intoxication, born of greed for dominion, lust for power; whilst the

conviction came to all that war was no longer possible, since science

in its almightiness was destined to be the sovereign creator of life,

and not the artisan of destruction.'

Then Suzanne in her turn relapsed into silence, quivering the while,

but with bright eyes, radiant indeed with the peace of the future. And

Luc, whose voice was becoming a mere breath, concluded: 'Yes, war is

dead, the supreme _étape_ has been reached, the brotherly kiss comes

after the long, rough, dolorous journey. And my day is over, I can now

go to sleep.'

He spoke no more. That last minute was august and sweet. Josine,

Sœurette, and Suzanne did not stir, but waited, exempt from sadness,

full indeed of tender fervour in that calm room, gay with flowers and

sunshine. Under the window the joyous children were still playing--one

could hear the shrill cries of the very little ones, and the laughter

of their elders, all the mirth of the future on the march to broader

and broader joys. And then there was the friendly sun resplendent on

the horizon, the sun, the fertiliser, the father, whose creative

force had been captured and domesticated. And under the flaring of its

rays of glory appeared the glittering roofs of triumphant Beauclair,

the busy hive where by a just apportionment of this world's riches

regenerated work now only created happy folk. And yet again beyond La

Roumagne, and on the other side of the Bleuse Mountains, there was

the coming federation of the peoples, the one sole brotherly nation,

mankind at last fulfilling its destiny of truth and justice and peace.

Then, for the last time, Luc gazed around him, his glance embracing the

town, the horizon, the whole earth, where the evolution which he had

started was progressing, and drawing nigh to completion. The work was

done, the city was founded. And Luc expired, entered into the torrent

of universal love and of everlasting life.

THE END.