Madame Toussaint still remained distrustful, however: “Ah!” she said,

“it’s just as well that he shouldn’t be in Paris; for with all these bomb

affairs we couldn’t help thinking of him, and saying that he was quite

mad enough to mix himself up in them.”

The other did not even blink. If she knew anything she kept it to

herself.

“But you, my dear, can’t you find any work?” continued Madame Toussaint.

“Well, what would you have me do with my poor eyes? It’s no longer

possible for me to sew.”

“That’s true. A seamstress gets done for. When Toussaint was laid up here

I myself wanted to go back to my old calling as a needlewoman. But there!

I spoilt everything and did no good. Charring’s about the only thing that

one can always do. Why don’t you get some jobs of that kind?”

“I’m trying, but I can’t find any.”

Little by little Madame Toussaint was softening at sight of the other’s

miserable appearance. She made her sit down, and told her that she would

give her something if Toussaint should come home with money. Then,

yielding to her partiality for gossiping, since there was somebody to

listen to her, she started telling stories. The one affair, however, on

which she invariably harped was the sorry business of her son Charles and

the servant girl at a wine shop over the way. Before going into the army

Charles had been a most hard-working and affectionate son, invariably

bringing his pay home to his mother. And certainly he still worked and

showed himself good-natured; but military service, while sharpening his

wits, had taken away some of his liking for ordinary manual toil. It

wasn’t that he regretted army life, for he spoke of his barracks as a

prison. Only his tools had seemed to him rather heavy when, on quitting

the service, he had been obliged to take them in hand once more.

“And so, my dear,” continued Madame Toussaint, “it’s all very well for

Charles to be kind-hearted, he can do no more for us. I knew that he

wasn’t in a hurry to get married, as it costs money to keep a wife. And

he was always very prudent, too, with girls. But what would you have?

There was that moment of folly with that Eugenie over the road, a regular

baggage who’s already gone off with another man, and left her baby

behind. Charles has put it out to nurse, and pays for it every month. And

a lot of expense it is too, perfect ruination. Yes, indeed, every

possible misfortune has fallen on us.”

In this wise Madame Toussaint rattled on for a full half hour. Then

seeing that waiting and anxiety had made her sister-in-law turn quite

pale, she suddenly stopped short. “You’re losing patience, eh?” she

exclaimed. “The fact is, that Toussaint won’t be back for some time.

Shall we go to the works together? I’ll easily find out if he’s likely to

bring any money home.”

They then decided to go down, but at the bottom of the stairs they

lingered for another quarter of an hour chatting with a neighbour who had

lately lost a child. And just as they were at last leaving the house they

heard a call: “Mamma! mamma!”

It came from little Celine, whose face was beaming with delight. She was

wearing a pair of new shoes and devouring a cake. “Mamma,” she resumed,

“Monsieur l’Abbe who came the other day wants to see you. Just look! he

bought me all this!”

On seeing the shoes and the cake, Madame Theodore understood matters. And

when Pierre, who was behind the child, accosted her she began to tremble

and stammer thanks. Madame Toussaint on her side had quickly drawn near,

not indeed to ask for anything herself, but because she was well pleased

at such a God-send for her sister-in-law, whose circumstances were worse

than her own. And when she saw the priest slip ten francs into Madame

Theodore’s hand she explained to him that she herself would willingly

have lent something had she been able. Then she promptly started on the

stories of Toussaint’s attack and her son Charles’s ill-luck.

But Celine broke in: “I say, mamma, the factory where papa used to work

is here in this street, isn’t it? Monsieur l’Abbe has some business

there.” *

* Although the children of the French peasantry almost

invariably address their parents as “father” and “mother,”

those of the working classes of Paris, and some other large

cities, usually employ the terms “papa” and “mamma.”--Trans.

“The Grandidier factory,” resumed Madame Toussaint; “well, we were just

going there, and we can show Monsieur l’Abbe the way.”

It was only a hundred steps off. Escorted by the two women and the child,

Pierre slackened his steps and tried to extract some information about

Salvat from Madame Theodore. But she at once became very prudent. She had

not seen him again, she declared; he must have gone with a mate to

Belgium, where there was a prospect of some work. From what she said, it

appeared to the priest that Salvat had not dared to return to the Rue des

Saules since his crime, in which all had collapsed, both his past life of

toil and hope, and his recent existence with its duties towards the woman

and the child.

“There’s the factory, Monsieur l’Abbe,” suddenly said Madame Toussaint,

“my sister-in-law won’t have to wait now, since you’ve been kind enough

to help her. Thank you for her and for us.”

Madame Theodore and Celine likewise poured forth their thanks, standing

beside Madame Toussaint in the everlasting mud of that populous district,

amidst the jostling of the passers-by. And lingering there as if to see

Pierre enter, they again chatted together and repeated that, after all,

some priests were very kind.

The Grandidier works covered an extensive plot of ground. Facing the

street there was only a brick building with narrow windows and a great

archway, through which one espied a long courtyard. But, in the rear,

came a suite of habitations, workshops, and sheds, above whose never

ending roofs arose the two lofty chimneys of the generators. From the

very threshold one detected the rumbling and quivering of machinery, all

the noise and bustle of work. Black water flowed by at one’s feet, and up

above white vapour spurted from a slender pipe with a regular strident

puff, as if it were the very breath of that huge, toiling hive.

Bicycles were now the principal output of the works. When Grandidier had

taken them on leaving the Dijon Arts and Trades School, they were

declining under bad management, slowly building some little motive

engines by the aid of antiquated machinery. Foreseeing the future,

however, he had induced his elder brother, one of the managers of the Bon

Marche, to finance him, on the promise that he would supply that great

emporium with excellent bicycles at 150 francs apiece. And now quite a

big venture was in progress, for the Bon Marche was already bringing out

the new popular machine “La Lisette,” the “Bicycle for the Multitude,” as

the advertisements asserted. Nevertheless, Grandidier was still in all

the throes of a great struggle, for his new machinery had cast a heavy

burden of debt on him. At the same time each month brought its effort,

the perfecting or simplifying of some part of the manufacture, which

meant a saving in the future. He was ever on the watch; and even now was

thinking of reverting to the construction of little motors, for he

thought he could divine in the near future the triumph of the motor-car.

On asking if M. Thomas Froment were there, Pierre was led by an old

workman to a little shed, where he found the young fellow in the linen

jacket of a mechanician, his hands black with filings. He was adjusting

some piece of mechanism, and nobody would have suspected him to be a

former pupil of the Lycee Condorcet, one of the three clever Froments who

had there rendered the name famous. But his only desire had been to act

as his father’s faithful servant, the arm that forges, the embodiment of

the manual toil by which conceptions are realised. And, a giant of three

and twenty, ever attentive and courageous, he was likewise a man of

patient, silent and sober nature.

On catching sight of Pierre he quivered with anxiety and sprang forward.

“Father is no worse?” he asked.

“No, no. But he read in the papers that story of a bradawl found in the

Rue Godot-de-Mauroy, and it made him anxious, because the police may make

a perquisition here.”

Thomas, his own anxiety allayed, began to smile. “Tell him he may sleep

quietly,” he responded. “To begin with, I’ve unfortunately not yet hit on

our little motor such as I want it to be. In fact, I haven’t yet put it

together. I’m keeping the pieces at our house, and nobody here knows

exactly what I come to do at the factory. So the police may search, it

will find nothing. Our secret runs no risk.”

Pierre promised to repeat these words to Guillaume, so as to dissipate

his fears. However, when he tried to sound Thomas, and ascertain the

position of affairs, what the factory people thought of the discovery of

the bradawl, and whether there was as yet any suspicion of Salvat, he

once more found the young man taciturn, and elicited merely a “yes” or a

“no” in answer to his inquiries. The police had not been there as yet?

No. But the men must surely have mentioned Salvat? Yes, of course, on

account of his Anarchist opinions. But what had Grandidier, the master,

said, on returning from the investigating magistrate’s? As for that

Thomas knew nothing. He had not seen Grandidier that day.

“But here he comes!” the young man added. “Ah! poor fellow, his wife, I

fancy, had another attack this morning.”

He alluded to a frightful story which Guillaume had already recounted to

Pierre. Grandidier, falling in love with a very beautiful girl, had

married her; but for five years now she had been insane: the result of

puerperal fever and the death of an infant son. Her husband, with his

ardent affection for her, had been unwilling to place her in an asylum,

and had accordingly kept her with him in a little pavilion, whose

windows, overlooking the courtyard of the factory, always remained

closed. She was never seen; and never did he speak of her to anybody. It

was said that she was usually like a child, very gentle and very sad, and

still beautiful, with regal golden hair. At times, however, attacks of

frantic madness came upon her, and he then had to struggle with her, and

often hold her for hours in his arms to prevent her from splitting her

head against the walls. Fearful shrieks would ring out for a time, and

then deathlike silence would fall once more.

Grandidier came into the shed where Thomas was working. A handsome man of

forty, with an energetic face, he had a dark and heavy moustache,

brush-like hair and clear eyes. He was very partial to Thomas, and during

the young fellow’s apprenticeship there, had treated him like a son. And

he now let him return thither whenever it pleased him, and placed his

appliances at his disposal. He knew that he was trying to devise a new

motor, a question in which he himself was extremely interested; still he

evinced the greatest discretion, never questioning Thomas, but awaiting

the result of his endeavours.

“This is my uncle, Abbe Froment, who looked in to wish me good day,” said

the young man, introducing Pierre.

An exchange of polite remarks ensued. Then Grandidier sought to cast off

the sadness which made people think him stern and harsh, and in a

bantering tone exclaimed: “I didn’t tell you, Thomas, of my business with

the investigating magistrate. If I hadn’t enjoyed a good reputation we

should have had all the spies of the Prefecture here. The magistrate

wanted me to explain the presence of that bradawl in the Rue

Godot-de-Mauroy, and I at once realised that, in his opinion, the culprit

must have worked here. For my part I immediately thought of Salvat. But I

don’t denounce people. The magistrate has my hiring-book, and as for

Salvat I simply answered that he worked here for nearly three months last

autumn, and then disappeared. They can look for him themselves! Ah! that

magistrate! you can picture him a little fellow with fair hair and

cat-like eyes, very careful of his appearance, a society man evidently,

but quite frisky at being mixed up in this affair.”

“Isn’t he Monsieur Amadieu?” asked Pierre.

“Yes, that’s his name. Ah! he’s certainly delighted with the present

which those Anarchists have made him, with that crime of theirs.”

The priest listened in deep anxiety. As his brother had feared, the true

scent, the first conducting wire, had now been found. And he looked at

Thomas to see if he also were disturbed. But the young man was either

ignorant of the ties which linked Salvat to his father, or else he

possessed great power of self-control, for he merely smiled at

Grandidier’s sketch of the magistrate.

Then, as Grandidier went to look at the piece of mechanism which Thomas

was finishing, and they began to speak about it, Pierre drew near to an

open doorway which communicated with a long workshop where engine lathes

were rumbling, and the beams of press-drills falling quickly and

rhythmically. Leather gearing spun along with a continuous gliding, and

there was ceaseless bustle and activity amidst the odoriferous dampness

of all the steam. Scores of perspiring workmen, grimy with dust and

filings, were still toiling. Still this was the final effort of the day.

And as three men approached a water-tap near Pierre to wash their hands,

he listened to their talk, and became particularly interested in it when

he heard one of them, a tall, ginger-haired fellow, call another

Toussaint, and the third Charles.

Toussaint, a big, square-shouldered man with knotty arms, only showed his

fifty years on his round, scorched face, which besides being roughened

and wrinkled by labour, bristled with grey hairs, which nowadays he was

content to shave off once a week. It was only his right arm that was

affected by paralysis, and moved rather sluggishly. As for Charles, a

living portrait of his father, he was now in all the strength of his six

and twentieth year, with splendid muscles distending his white skin, and

a full face barred by a heavy black moustache. The three men, like their

employer, were speaking of the explosion at the Duvillard mansion, of the

bradawl found there, and of Salvat, whom they all now suspected.

“Why, only a brigand would do such a thing!” said Toussaint. “That

Anarchism disgusts me. I’ll have none of it. But all the same it’s for

the _bourgeois_ to settle matters. If the others want to blow them up,

it’s their concern. It’s they who brought it about.”

This indifference was undoubtedly the outcome of a life of want and

social injustice; it was the indifference of an old toiler, who, weary of

struggling and hoping for improvements, was now quite ready to tolerate

the crumbling of a social system, which threatened him with hunger in his

impotent old age.

“Well, you know,” rejoined Charles, “I’ve heard the Anarchists talking,

and they really say some very true and sensible things. And just take

yourself, father; you’ve been working for thirty years, and isn’t it

abominable that you should have had to pass through all that you did pass

through recently, liable to go off like some old horse that’s slaughtered

at the first sign of illness? And, of course, it makes me think of

myself, and I can’t help feeling that it won’t be at all amusing to end

like that. And may the thunder of God kill me if I’m wrong, but one feels

half inclined to join in their great flare-up if it’s really to make

everybody happy!”

He certainly lacked the flame of enthusiasm, and if he had come to these

views it was solely from impatience to lead a less toilsome life, for

obligatory military service had given him ideas of equality among all

men--a desire to struggle, raise himself and obtain his legitimate share

of life’s enjoyments. It was, in fact, the inevitable step which carries

each generation a little more forward. There was the father, who,

deceived in his hope of a fraternal republic, had grown sceptical and

contemptuous; and there was the son advancing towards a new faith, and

gradually yielding to ideas of violence, since political liberty had

failed to keep its promises.

Nevertheless, as the big, ginger-haired fellow grew angry, and shouted

that if Salvat were guilty, he ought to be caught and guillotined at

once, without waiting for judges, Toussaint ended by endorsing his

opinion. “Yes, yes, he may have married one of my sisters, but I renounce

him.... And yet, you know, it would astonish me to find him guilty,

for he isn’t wicked at heart. I’m sure he wouldn’t kill a fly.”

“But what would you have?” put in Charles. “When a man’s driven to

extremities he goes mad.”

They had now washed themselves; but Toussaint, on perceiving his

employer, lingered there in order to ask him for an advance. As it

happened, Grandidier, after cordially shaking hands with Pierre,

approached the old workman of his own accord, for he held him in esteem.

And, after listening to him, he gave him a line for the cashier on a

card. As a rule, he was altogether against the practice of advancing

money, and his men disliked him, and said he was over rigid, though in

point of fact he had a good heart. But he had his position as an employer

to defend, and to him concessions meant ruin. With such keen competition

on all sides, with the capitalist system entailing a terrible and

incessant struggle, how could one grant the demands of the workers, even

when they were legitimate?

Sudden compassion came upon Pierre when, after quitting Thomas, he saw

Grandidier, who had finished his round, crossing the courtyard in the

direction of the closed pavilion, where all the grief of his

heart-tragedy awaited him. Here was that man waging the battle of life,

defending his fortune with the risk that his business might melt away

amidst the furious warfare between capital and labour; and at the same

time, in lieu of evening repose, finding naught but anguish it his

hearth: a mad wife, an adored wife, who had sunk back into infancy, and

was for ever dead to love! How incurable was his secret despair! Even on

the days when he triumphed in his workshops, disaster awaited him at

home. And could any more unhappy man, any man more deserving of pity, be

found even among the poor who died of hunger, among those gloomy workers,

those vanquished sons of labour who hated and who envied him?

When Pierre found himself in the street again he was astonished to see

Madame Toussaint and Madame Theodore still there with little Celine. With

their feet in the mud, like bits of wreckage against which beat the

ceaseless flow of wayfarers, they had lingered there, still and ever

chatting, loquacious and doleful, lulling their wretchedness to rest

beneath a deluge of tittle-tattle. And when Toussaint, followed by his

son, came out, delighted with the advance he had secured, he also found

them on the same spot. Then he told Madame Theodore the story of the

bradawl, and the idea which had occurred to him and all his mates that

Salvat might well be the culprit. She, however, though turning very pale,

began to protest, concealing both what she knew and what she really

thought.

“I tell you I haven’t seen him for several days,” said she. “He must

certainly be in Belgium. And as for a bomb, that’s humbug. You say

yourself that he’s very gentle and wouldn’t harm a fly!”

A little later as Pierre journeyed back to Neuilly in a tramcar he fell

into a deep reverie. All the stir and bustle of that working-class

district, the buzzing of the factory, the overflowing activity of that

hive of labour, seemed to have lingered within him. And for the first

time, amidst his worries, he realised the necessity of work. Yes, it was

fatal, but it also gave health and strength. In effort which sustains and

saves, he at last found a solid basis on which all might be reared. Was

this, then, the first gleam of a new faith? But ah! what mockery! Work an

uncertainty, work hopeless, work always ending in injustice! And then

want ever on the watch for the toiler, strangling him as soon as slack

times came round, and casting him into the streets like a dead dog

immediately old age set in.

On reaching Neuilly, Pierre found Bertheroy at Guillaume’s bedside. The

old _savant_ had just dressed the injured wrist, and was not yet certain

that no complications would arise. “The fact is,” he said to Guillaume,

“you don’t keep quiet. I always find you in a state of feverish emotion

which is the worst possible thing for you. You must calm yourself, my

dear fellow, and not allow anything to worry you.”

A few minutes later, though, just as he was going away, he said with his

pleasant smile: “Do you know that a newspaper writer came to interview me

about that explosion? Those reporters imagine that scientific men know

everything! I told the one who called on me that it would be very kind of

_him_ to enlighten _me_ as to what powder was employed. And, by the way,

I am giving a lesson on explosives at my laboratory to-morrow. There will

be just a few persons present. You might come as well, Pierre, so as to

give an account of it to Guillaume; it would interest him.”

At a glance from his brother, Pierre accepted the invitation. Then,

Bertheroy having gone, he recounted all he had learnt during the

afternoon, how Salvat was suspected, and how the investigating magistrate

had been put on the right scent. And at this news, intense fever again

came over Guillaume, who, with his head buried in the pillow, and his

eyes closed, stammered as if in a kind of nightmare: “Ah! then, this is

the end! Salvat arrested, Salvat interrogated! Ah! that so much toil and

so much hope should crumble!”

IV. CULTURE AND HOPE

ON the morrow, punctually at one o’clock, Pierre reached the Rue d’Ulm,

where Bertheroy resided in a fairly large house, which the State had

placed at his disposal, in order that he might install in it a laboratory

for study and research. Thus the whole first floor had been transformed

into one spacious apartment, where, from time to time, the illustrious

chemist was fond of receiving a limited number of pupils and admirers,

before whom he made experiments, and explained his new discoveries and

theories.

For these occasions a few chairs were set out before the long and massive

table, which was covered with jars and appliances. In the rear one saw

the furnace, while all around were glass cases, full of vials and

specimens. The persons present were, for the most part, fellow _savants_,

with a few young men, and even a lady or two, and, of course, an

occasional journalist. The whole made up a kind of family gathering, the

visitors chatting with the master in all freedom.

Directly Bertheroy perceived Pierre he came forward, pressed his hand and

seated him on a chair beside Guillaume’s son Francois, who had been one

of the first arrivals. The young man was completing his third year at the

Ecole Normale, close by, so he only had a few steps to take to call upon

his master Bertheroy, whom he regarded as one of the firmest minds of the

age. Pierre was delighted to meet his nephew, for he had been greatly

impressed in his favour on the occasion of his visit to Montmartre.

Francois, on his side, greeted his uncle with all the cordial

expansiveness of youth. He was, moreover, well pleased to obtain some

news of his father.

However, Bertheroy began. He spoke in a familiar and sober fashion, but

frequently employed some very happy expressions. At first he gave an

account of his own extensive labours and investigations with regard to

explosive substances, and related with a laugh that he sometimes

manipulated powders which would have blown up the entire district. But,

said he, in order to reassure his listeners, he was always extremely

prudent. At last he turned to the subject of that explosion in the Rue

Godot-de-Mauroy, which, for some days, had filled Paris with dismay. The

remnants of the bomb had been carefully examined by experts, and one

fragment had been brought to him, in order that he might give his opinion

on it. The bomb appeared to have been prepared in a very rudimentary

fashion; it had been charged with small pieces of iron, and fired by

means of a match, such as a child might have devised. The extraordinary

part of the affair was the formidable power of the central cartridge,

which, although it must have been a small one, had wrought as much havoc

as any thunderbolt. And the question was this: What incalculable power of

destruction might one not arrive at if the charge were increased ten,

twenty or a hundredfold. Embarrassment began, and divergencies of opinion

clouded the issue directly one tried to specify what explosive had been

employed. Of the three experts who had been consulted, one pronounced

himself in favour of dynamite pure and simple; but the two others,

although they did not agree together, believed in some combination of

explosive matters. He, Bertheroy, had modestly declined to adjudicate,

for the fragment submitted to him bore traces of so slight a character,

that analysis became impossible. Thus he was unwilling to make any

positive pronouncement. But his opinion was that one found oneself in

presence of some unknown powder, some new explosive, whose power exceeded

anything that had hitherto been dreamt of. He could picture some unknown

_savant_, or some ignorant but lucky inventor, discovering the formula of

this explosive under mysterious conditions. And this brought him to the

point he wished to reach, the question of all the explosives which are so

far unknown, and of the coming discoveries which he could foresee. In the

course of his investigations he himself had found cause to suspect the

existence of several such explosives, though he had lacked time and

opportunity to prosecute his studies in that direction. However, he

indicated the field which should be explored, and the best way of

proceeding. In his opinion it was there that lay the future. And in a

broad and eloquent peroration, he declared that explosives had hitherto

been degraded by being employed in idiotic schemes of vengeance and

destruction; whereas it was in them possibly that lay the liberating

force which science was seeking, the lever which would change the face of

the world, when they should have been so domesticated and subdued as to

be only the obedient servants of man.

Throughout this familiar discourse Pierre could feel that Francois was

growing impassioned, quivering at thought of the vast horizon which the

master opened up. He himself had become extremely interested, for he

could not do otherwise than notice certain allusions, and connect what he

heard with what he had guessed of Guillaume’s anxiety regarding that

secret which he feared to see at the mercy of an investigating

magistrate. And so as he, Pierre, before going off with Francois,

approached Bertheroy to wish him good day, he pointedly remarked:

“Guillaume will be very sorry that he was unable to hear you unfold those

admirable ideas.”

The old _savant_ smiled. “Pooh!” said he; “just give him a summary of

what I said. He will understand. He knows more about the matter than I

do.”

In presence of the illustrious chemist, Francois preserved the silent

gravity of a respectful pupil, but when he and Pierre had taken a few

steps down the street in silence, he remarked: “What a pity it is that a

man of such broad intelligence, free from all superstition, and anxious

for the sole triumph of truth, should have allowed himself to be

classified, ticketed, bound round with titles and academical functions!

How greatly our affection for him would increase if he took less State

pay, and freed himself from all the grand cordons which tie his hands.”

“What would you have!” rejoined Pierre, in a conciliatory spirit. “A man

must live! At the same time I believe that he does not regard himself as

tied by anything.”

Then, as they had reached the entrance of the Ecole Normale, the priest

stopped, thinking that his companion was going back to the college. But

Francois, raising his eyes and glancing at the old place, remarked: “No,

no, to-day’s Thursday, and I’m at liberty! Oh! we have a deal of liberty,

perhaps too much. But for my own part I’m well pleased at it, for it

often enables me to go to Montmartre and work at my old little table.

It’s only there that I feel any real strength and clearness of mind.”

His preliminary examinations had entitled him to admission at either the

Ecole Polytechnique or the Ecole Normale,* and he had chosen the latter,

entering its scientific section with No. 1 against his name. His father

had wished him to make sure of an avocation, that of professor, even if

circumstances should allow him to remain independent and follow his own

bent on leaving the college. Francois, who was very precocious, was now

preparing for his last examination there, and the only rest he took was

in walking to and from Montmartre, or in strolling through the Luxembourg

gardens.

* The purposes of the Ecole Normale have been referred to on

p. 197. At the Ecole Polytechnique young men receive much

of the preliminary training which they require to become

either artillery officers, or military, naval or civil

engineers.--Trans.

From force of habit he now turned towards the latter, accompanied by

Pierre and chatting with him. One found the mildness of springtime there

that February afternoon; for pale sunshine streamed between the trees,

which were still leafless. It was indeed one of those first fine days

which draw little green gems from the branches of the lilac bushes.

The Ecole Normale was still the subject of conversation and Pierre

remarked: “I must own that I hardly like the spirit that prevails there.

Excellent work is done, no doubt, and the only way to form professors is

to teach men the trade by cramming them with the necessary knowledge. But

the worst is that although all the students are trained for the teaching

profession, many of them don’t remain in it, but go out into the world,

take to journalism, or make it their business to control the arts,

literature and society. And those who do this are for the most part

unbearable. After swearing by Voltaire they have gone back to

spirituality and mysticism, the last drawing-room craze. Now that a firm

faith in science is regarded as brutish and inelegant, they fancy that

they rid themselves of their caste by feigning amiable doubt, and

ignorance, and innocence. What they most fear is that they may carry a

scent of the schools about with them, so they put on extremely Parisian

airs, venture on somersaults and slang, and assume all the grace of

dancing bears in their eager desire to please. From that desire spring

the sarcastic shafts which they aim at science, they who pretend that

they know everything, but who go back to the belief of the humble, the

_naive_ idealism of Biblical legends, just because they think the latter

to be more distinguished.”

Francois began to laugh: “The portrait is perhaps a little overdrawn,”

said he, “still there’s truth in it, a great deal of truth.”

“I have known several of them,” continued Pierre, who was growing

animated. “And among them all I have noticed that a fear of being duped

leads them to reaction against the entire effort, the whole work of the

century. Disgust with liberty, distrust of science, denial of the future,

that is what they now profess. And they have such a horror of the

commonplace that they would rather believe in nothing or the incredible.

It may of course be commonplace to say that two and two make four, yet

it’s true enough; and it is far less foolish for a man to say and repeat

it than to believe, for instance, in the miracles of Lourdes.”

Francois glanced at the priest in astonishment. The other noticed it and

strove to restrain himself. Nevertheless, grief and anger carried him

away whenever he spoke of the educated young people of the time, such as,

in his despair, he imagined them to be. In the same way as he had pitied

the toilers dying of hunger in the districts of misery and want, so here

he overflowed with contempt for the young minds that lacked bravery in

the presence of knowledge, and harked back to the consolation of

deceptive spirituality, the promise of an eternity of happiness in death,

which last was longed for and exalted as the very sum of life. Was not

the cowardly thought of refusing to live for the sake of living so as to

discharge one’s simple duty in being and making one’s effort, equivalent

to absolute assassination of life? However, the _Ego_ was always the

mainspring; each one sought personal happiness. And Pierre was grieved to

think that those young people, instead of discarding the past and

marching on to the truths of the future, were relapsing into shadowy

metaphysics through sheer weariness and idleness, due in part perhaps to

the excessive exertion of the century, which had been overladen with

human toil.

However, Francois had begun to smile again. “But you are mistaken,” said

he; “we are not all like that at the Ecole Normale. You only seem to know

the Normalians of the Section of Letters, and your opinions would surely

change if you knew those of the Section of Sciences. It is quite true

that the reaction against Positivism is making itself felt among our

literary fellow-students, and that they, like others, are haunted by the

idea of that famous bankruptcy of science. This is perhaps due to their

masters, the neo-spiritualists and dogmatical rhetoricians into whose

hands they have fallen. And it is still more due to fashion, the whim of

the times which, as you have very well put it, regards scientific truth

as bad taste, something graceless and altogether too brutal for light and

distinguished minds. Consequently, a young fellow of any shrewdness who

desires to please is perforce won over to the new spirit.”

“The new spirit!” interrupted Pierre, unable to restrain himself. “Oh!

that is no mere innocent, passing fashion, it is a tactical device and a

terrible one, an offensive return of the powers of darkness against those

of light, of servitude against free thought, truth and justice.”

Then, as the young man again looked at him with growing astonishment, he

relapsed into silence. The figure of Monseigneur Martha had risen before

his eyes, and he fancied he could again hear the prelate at the

Madeleine, striving to win Paris over to the policy of Rome, to that

spurious neo-Catholicism which, with the object of destroying democracy

and science, accepted such portions of them as it could adapt to its own

views. This was indeed the supreme struggle. Thence came all the poison

poured forth to the young. Pierre knew what efforts were being made in

religious circles to help on this revival of mysticism, in the mad hope

of hastening the rout of science. Monseigneur Martha, who was

all-powerful at the Catholic University, said to his intimates, however,

that three generations of devout and docile pupils would be needed before

the Church would again be absolute sovereign of France.

“Well, as for the Ecole Normale,” continued Francois, “I assure you that

you are mistaken. There are a few narrow bigots there, no doubt. But even

in the Section of Letters the majority of the students are sceptics at

bottom--sceptics of discreet and good-natured average views. Of course

they are professors before everything else, though they are a trifle

ashamed of it; and, as professors, they judge things with no little

pedantic irony, devoured by a spirit of criticism, and quite incapable of

creating anything themselves. I should certainly be astonished to see the

man of genius whom we await come out of their ranks. To my thinking,

indeed, it would be preferable that some barbarian genius, neither well

read nor endowed with critical faculty, or power of weighing and shading

things, should come and open the next century with a hatchet stroke,

sending up a fine flare of truth and reality.... But, as for my

comrades of the Scientific Section, I assure you that neo-Catholicism and

Mysticism and Occultism, and every other branch of the fashionable

phantasmagoria trouble them very little indeed. They are not making a

religion of science, they remain open to doubt on many points; but they

are mostly men of very clear and firm minds, whose passion is the

acquirement of certainty, and who are ever absorbed in the investigations

which continue throughout the whole vast field of human knowledge. They

haven’t flinched, they have remained Positivists, or Evolutionists, or

Determinists, and have set their faith in observation and experiment to

help on the final conquest of the world.”

Francois himself was growing excited, as he thus confessed his faith

while strolling along the quiet sunlit garden paths. “The young indeed!”

he resumed. “Do people know them? It makes us laugh when we see all sorts

of apostles fighting for us, trying to attract us, and saying that we are

white or black or grey, according to the hue which they require for the

triumph of their particular ideas! The young, the real ones, why, they’re

in the schools, the laboratories and the libraries. It’s they who work

and who’ll bring to-morrow to the world. It’s not the young fellows of

dinner and supper clubs, manifestoes and all sorts of extravagances. The

latter make a great deal of noise, no doubt; in fact, they alone are

heard. But if you knew of the ceaseless efforts and passionate striving

of the others, those who remain silent, absorbed in their tasks. And I

know many of them: they are with their century, they have rejected none

of its hopes, but are marching on to the coming century, resolved to

pursue the work of their forerunners, ever going towards more light and

more equity. And just speak to them of the bankruptcy of science. They’ll

shrug their shoulders at the mere idea, for they know well enough that

science has never before inflamed so many hearts or achieved greater

conquests! It is only if the schools, laboratories and libraries were

closed, and the social soil radically changed, that one would have cause

to fear a fresh growth of error such as weak hearts and narrow minds hold

so dear!”

At this point Francois’s fine flow of eloquence was interrupted. A tall

young fellow stopped to shake hands with him; and Pierre was surprised to

recognise Baron Duvillard’s son Hyacinthe, who bowed to him in very

correct style. “What! you here in our old quarter,” exclaimed Francois.

“My dear fellow, I’m going to Jonas’s, over yonder, behind the

Observatory. Don’t you know Jonas? Ah! my dear fellow, he’s a delightful

sculptor, who has succeeded in doing away with matter almost entirely. He

has carved a figure of Woman, no bigger than the finger, and entirely

soul, free from all baseness of form, and yet complete. All Woman,

indeed, in her essential symbolism! Ah! it’s grand, it’s overpowering. A

perfect scheme of aesthetics, a real religion!”

Francois smiled as he looked at Hyacinthe, buttoned up in his long

pleated frock-coat, with his made-up face, and carefully cropped hair and

beard. “And yourself?” said he, “I thought you were working, and were

going to publish a little poem, shortly?”

“Oh! the task of creating is so distasteful to me, my dear fellow! A

single line often takes me weeks.... Still, yes, I have a little poem

on hand, ‘The End of Woman.’ And you see, I’m not so exclusive as some

people pretend, since I admire Jonas, who still believes in Woman. His

excuse is sculpture, which, after all, is at best such a gross

materialistic art. But in poetry, good heavens, how we’ve been

overwhelmed with Woman, always Woman! It’s surely time to drive her out

of the temple, and cleanse it a little. Ah! if we were all pure and lofty

enough to do without Woman, and renounce all those horrid sexual

questions, so that the last of the species might die childless, eh? The

world would then at least finish in a clean and proper manner!”

Thereupon, Hyacinthe walked off with his languid air, well pleased with

the effect which he had produced on the others.

“So you know him?” said Pierre to Francois.

“He was my school-fellow at Condorcet, we were in the same classes

together. Such a funny fellow he was! A perfect dunce! And he was always

making a parade of Father Duvillard’s millions, while pretending to

disdain them, and act the revolutionist, for ever saying that he’d use

his cigarette to fire the cartridge which was to blow up the world! He

was Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, and Tolstoi, and Ibsen, rolled into one!

And you can see what he has become with it all: a humbug with a diseased

mind!”

“It’s a terrible symptom,” muttered Pierre, “when through _ennui_ or

lassitude, or the contagion of destructive fury, the sons of the happy

and privileged ones start doing the work of the demolishers.”

Francois had resumed his walk, going down towards the ornamental water,

where some children were sailing their boats. “That fellow is simply

grotesque,” he replied; “but how would you have sane people give any heed

to that mysticism, that awakening of spirituality which is alleged by the

same _doctrinaires_ who started the bankruptcy of science cry, when after

so brief an evolution it produces such insanity, both in art and

literature? A few years of influence have sufficed; and now Satanism,

Occultism and other absurdities are flourishing; not to mention that,

according to some accounts, the Cities of the Plains are reconciled with

new Rome. Isn’t the tree judged by its fruits? And isn’t it evident that,

instead of a renascence, a far-spreading social movement bringing back

the past, we are simply witnessing a transitory reaction, which many

things explain? The old world would rather not die, and is struggling in

a final convulsion, reviving for a last hour before it is swept away by

the overflowing river of human knowledge, whose waters ever increase. And

yonder, in the future, is the new world, which the real young ones will

bring into existence, those who work, those who are not known, who are

not heard. And yet, just listen! Perhaps you will hear them, for we are

among them, in their ‘quarter.’ This deep silence is that of the labour

of all the young fellows who are leaning over their work-tables, and day

by day carrying forward the conquest of truth.”

So saying Francois waved his hand towards all the day-schools and

colleges and high schools beyond the Luxembourg garden, towards the

Faculties of Law and Medicine, the Institute and its five Academies, the

innumerable libraries and museums which made up the broad domain of

intellectual labour. And Pierre, moved by it all, shaken in his theories

of negation, thought that he could indeed hear a low but far-spreading

murmur of the work of thousands of active minds, rising from

laboratories, studies and class, reading and lecture rooms. It was not

like the jerky, breathless trepidation, the loud clamour of factories

where manual labour toils and chafes. But here, too, there were sighs of

weariness, efforts as killing, exertion as fruitful in its results. Was

it indeed true that the cultured young were still and ever in their

silent forge, renouncing no hope, relinquishing no conquest, but in full

freedom of mind forging the truth and justice of to-morrow with the

invincible hammers of observation and experiment?

Francois, however, had raised his eyes to the palace clock to ascertain

the time. “I’m going to Montmartre,” he said; “will you come part of the

way with me?”

Pierre assented, particularly as the young man added that on his way he

meant to call for his brother Antoine at the Museum of the Louvre. That

bright afternoon the Louvre picture galleries were steeped in warm and

dignified quietude, which one particularly noticed on coming from the

tumult and scramble of the streets. The majority of the few people one

found there were copyists working in deep silence, which only the

wandering footsteps of an occasional tourist disturbed. Pierre and

Francois found Antoine at the end of the gallery assigned to the

Primitive masters. With scrupulous, almost devout care he was making a

drawing of a figure by Mantegna. The Primitives did not impassion him by

reason of any particular mysticism and ideality, such as fashion pretends

to find in them, but on the contrary, and justifiably enough, by reason

of the sincerity of their ingenuous realism, their respect and modesty in

presence of nature, and the minute fidelity with which they sought to

transcribe it. He spent days of hard work in copying and studying them,

in order to learn strictness and probity of drawing from them--all that

lofty distinction of style which they owe to their candour as honest

artists.

Pierre was struck by the pure glow which a sitting of good hard work had

set in Antoine’s light blue eyes. It imparted warmth and even

feverishness to his fair face, which was usually all dreaminess and

gentleness. His lofty forehead now truly looked like a citadel armed for

the conquest of truth and beauty. He was only eighteen, and his story was

simply this: as he had grown disgusted with classical studies and been

mastered by a passion for drawing, his father had let him leave the Lycee

Condorcet when he was in the third class there. Some little time had then

elapsed while he felt his way and the deep originality within him was

being evolved. He had tried etching on copper, but had soon come to wood

engraving, and had attached himself to it in spite of the discredit into

which it had fallen, lowered as it had been to the level of a mere trade.

Was there not here an entire art to restore and enlarge? For his own part

he dreamt of engraving his own drawings, of being at once the brain which

conceives and the hand which executes, in such wise as to obtain new

effects of great intensity both as regards perception and touch. To

comply with the wishes of his father, who desired each of his sons to

have a trade, he earned his bread like other engravers by working for the

illustrated newspapers. But, in addition to this current work, he had

already engraved several blocks instinct with wonderful power and life.

They were simply copies of real things, scenes of everyday existence, but

they were accentuated, elevated so to say, by the essential line, with a

maestria which on the part of so young a lad fairly astonished one.

“Do you want to engrave that?” Francois asked him, as he placed his copy

of Mantegna’s figure in his portfolio.

“Oh! no, that’s merely a dip into innocence, a good lesson to teach one

to be modest and sincere. Life is very different nowadays.”

Then, while walking along the streets--for Pierre, who felt growing

sympathy for the two young fellows, went with them in the direction of

Montmartre, forgetful of all else,--Antoine, who was beside him, spoke

expansively of his artistic dreams.

“Colour is certainly a power, a sovereign source of charm, and one may,

indeed, say that without colour nothing can be completely represented.

Yet, singularly enough, it isn’t indispensable to me. It seems to me that

I can picture life as intensely and definitely with mere black and white,

and I even fancy that I shall be able to do so in a more essential

manner, without any of the dupery which lies in colour. But what a task

it is! I should like to depict the Paris of to-day in a few scenes, a few

typical figures, which would serve as testimony for all time. And I

should like to do it with great fidelity and candour, for an artist only

lives by reason of his candour, his humility and steadfast belief in

Nature, which is ever beautiful. I’ve already done a few figures, I will

show them to you. But ah! if I only dared to tackle my blocks with the

graver, at the outset, without drawing my subject beforehand. For that

generally takes away one’s fire. However, what I do with the pencil is a

mere sketch; for with the graver I may come upon a find, some unexpected

strength or delicacy of effect. And so I’m draughtsman and engraver all

in one, in such a way that my blocks can only be turned out by myself. If

the drawings on them were engraved by another, they would be quite

lifeless.... Yes, life can spring from the fingers just as well as

from the brain, when one really possesses creative power.”

They walked on, and when they found themselves just below Montmartre, and

Pierre spoke of taking a tramcar to return to Neuilly, Antoine, quite

feverish with artistic passion, asked him if he knew Jahan, the sculptor,

who was working for the Sacred Heart. And on receiving a negative reply,

he added: “Well, come and see him for a moment. He has a great future

before him. You’ll see an angel of his which has been declined.”

Then, as Francois began to praise the angel in question, Pierre agreed to

accompany them. On the summit of the height, among all the sheds which

the building of the basilica necessitated, Jahan had been able to set up

a glazed workshop large enough for the huge angel ordered of him. His

three visitors found him there in a blouse, watching a couple of

assistants, who were rough-hewing the block of stone whence the angel was

to emerge. Jahan was a sturdy man of thirty-six, with dark hair and

beard, a large, ruddy mouth and fine bright eyes. Born in Paris, he had

studied at the Fine Art School, but his impetuous temperament had

constantly landed him in trouble there.

“Ah! yes,” said he, “you’ve come to see my angel, the one which the

Archbishop wouldn’t take. Well, there it is.”

The clay model of the figure, some three feet high, and already drying,

looked superb in its soaring posture, with its large, outspread wings

expanding as if with passionate desire for the infinite. The body, barely

draped, was that of a slim yet robust youth, whose face beamed with the

rapture of his heavenly flight.

“They found him too human,” said Jahan. “And after all they were right.

There’s nothing so difficult to conceive as an angel. One even hesitates

as to the sex; and when faith is lacking one has to take the first model

one finds and copy it and spoil it. For my part, while I was modelling

that one, I tried to imagine a beautiful youth suddenly endowed with

wings, and carried by the intoxication of his flight into all the joy of

the sunshine. But it upset them, they wanted something more religious,

they said; and so then I concocted that wretched thing over there. After

all, one has to earn one’s living, you know.”

So saying, he waved his hand towards another model, the one for which his

assistants were preparing the stone. And this model represented an angel

of the correct type, with symmetrical wings like those of a goose, a

figure of neither sex, and commonplace features, expressing the silly

ecstasy that tradition requires.

“What would you have?” continued Jahan. “Religious art has sunk to the

most disgusting triteness. People no longer believe; churches are built

like barracks, and decorated with saints and virgins fit to make one

weep. The fact is that genius is only the fruit of the social soil; and a

great artist can only send up a blaze of the faith of the time he lives

in. For my part, I’m the grandson of a Beauceron peasant. My father came

to Paris to set himself up in business as a marble worker for tombstones

and so forth, just at the top of the Rue de la Roquette. It was there I

grew up. I began as a workman, and all my childhood was spent among the

masses, in the streets, without ever a thought coming to me of setting

foot in a church. So few Parisians think of doing so nowadays. And so

what’s to become of art since there’s no belief in the Divinity or even

in beauty? We’re forced to go forward to the new faith, which is the

faith in life and work and fruitfulness, in all that labours and

produces.”

Then suddenly breaking off he exclaimed: “By the way, I’ve been doing

some more work to my figure of Fecundity, and I’m fairly well pleased

with it. Just come with me and I’ll show it you.”

Thereupon he insisted on taking them to his private studio, which was

near by, just below Guillaume’s little house. It was entered by way of

the Rue du Calvaire, a street which is simply a succession of ladder-like

flights of steps. The door opened on to one of the little landings, and

one found oneself in a spacious, well-lighted apartment littered with

models and casts, fragments and figures, quite an overflow of sturdy,

powerful talent. On a stool was the unfinished model of Fecundity swathed

in wet cloths. These Jahan removed, and then she stood forth with her

rounded figure, her broad hips and her wifely, maternal bosom, full of

the milk which nourishes and redeems.

“Well, what do you think of her?” asked Jahan. “Built as she is, I fancy

that her children ought to be less puny than the pale, languid, aesthetic

fellows of nowadays!”

While Antoine and Francois were admiring the figure, Pierre, for his

part, took most interest in a young girl who had opened the door to them,

and who had now wearily reseated herself at a little table to continue a

book she was reading. This was Jahan’s sister, Lise. A score of years

younger than himself, she was but sixteen, and had been living alone with

him since their father’s death. Very slight and delicate looking, she had

a most gentle face, with fine light hair which suggested pale gold-dust.

She was almost a cripple, with legs so weak that she only walked with

difficulty, and her mind also was belated, still full of childish

_naivete_. At first this had much saddened her brother, but with time he

had grown accustomed to her innocence and languor. Busy as he always was,

ever in a transport, overflowing with new plans, he somewhat neglected

her by force of circumstances, letting her live beside him much as she

listed.

Pierre had noticed, however, the sisterly impulsiveness with which she

had greeted Antoine. And the latter, after congratulating Jahan on his

statue, came and sat down beside her, questioned her and wished to see

the book which she was reading. During the last six months the most pure

and affectionate intercourse had sprung up between them. He, from his

father’s garden, up yonder on the Place du Tertre, could see her through

the huge window of that studio where she led so innocent a life. And

noticing that she was always alone, as if forsaken, he had begun to take

an interest in her. Then had come acquaintance; and, delighted to find

her so simple and so charming, he had conceived the design of rousing her

to intelligence and life, by loving her, by becoming at once the mind and

the heart whose power fructifies. Weak plant that she was, in need of

delicate care, sunshine and affection, he became for her all that her

brother had, through circumstances, failed to be. He had already taught

her to read, a task in which every mistress had previously failed. But

him she listened to and understood. And by slow degrees a glow of

happiness came to the beautiful clear eyes set in her irregular face. It

was love’s miracle, the creation of woman beneath the breath of a young

lover who gave himself entirely. No doubt she still remained very

delicate, with such poor health that one ever feared that she might

expire in a faint sigh; and her legs, moreover, were still too weak to

admit of her walking any distance. But all the same, she was no longer

the little wilding, the little ailing flower of the previous spring.

Jahan, who marvelled at the incipient miracle, drew near to the young

people. “Ah!” said he, “your pupil does you honour. She reads quite

fluently, you know, and understands the fine books you send her. You read

to me of an evening now, don’t you, Lise?”

She raised her candid eyes, and gazed at Antoine with a smile of infinite

gratitude. “Oh! whatever he’ll teach me,” she said, “I’ll learn it, and

do it.”

The others laughed gently. Then, as the visitors were going off, Francois

paused before a model which had cracked while drying. “Oh! that’s a

spoilt thing,” said the sculptor. “I wanted to model a figure of Charity.

It was ordered of me by a philanthropic institution. But try as I might,

I could only devise something so commonplace that I let the clay spoil.

Still, I must think it over and endeavour to take the matter in hand

again.”

When they were outside, it occurred to Pierre to go as far as the

basilica of the Sacred Heart in the hope of finding Abbe Rose there. So

the three of them went round by way of the Rue Gabrielle and climbed the

steps of the Rue Chape. And just as they were reaching the summit where

the basilica reared its forest of scaffoldings beneath the clear sky,

they encountered Thomas, who, on leaving the factory, had gone to give an

order to a founder in the Rue Lamarck.

He, who as a rule was so silent and discreet, now happened to be in an

expansive mood, which made him look quite radiant. “Ah! I’m so pleased,”

he said, addressing Pierre; “I fancy that I’ve found what I want for our

little motor. Tell father that things are going on all right, and that he

must make haste to get well.”

At these words his brothers, Francois and Antoine, drew close to him with

a common impulse. And they stood there all three, a valiant little group,

their hearts uniting and beating with one and the same delight at the

idea that their father would be gladdened, that the good news they were

sending him would help him towards recovery. As for Pierre, who, now that

he knew them, was beginning to love them and judge them at their worth,

he marvelled at the sight of these three young giants, each so strikingly

like the other, and drawn together so closely and so promptly, directly

their filial affection took fire.

“Tell him that we are waiting for him, and will come to him at the first

sign if we are wanted.”

Then each in turn shook the priest’s hand vigorously. And while he

remained watching them as they went off towards the little house, whose

garden he perceived over the wall of the Rue Saint Eleuthere, he fancied

he could there detect a delicate silhouette, a white, sunlit face under a

help of dark hair. It was doubtless the face of Marie, examining the buds

on her lilac bushes. At that evening hour, however, the diffuse light was

so golden that the vision seemed to fade in it as in a halo. And Pierre,

feeling dazzled, turned his head, and on the other side saw naught but

the overwhelming, chalky mass of the basilica, whose hugeness shut out

all view of the horizon.

For a moment he remained motionless on that spot, so agitated by

conflicting thoughts and feelings that he could read neither heart nor

mind clearly. Then, as he turned towards the city, all Paris spread

itself out at his feet, a limpid, lightsome Paris, beneath the pink glow

of that spring-like evening. The endless billows of house-roofs showed

forth with wonderful distinctness, and one could have counted the chimney

stacks and the little black streaks of the windows by the million. The

edifices rising into the calm atmosphere seemed like the anchored vessels

of some fleet arrested in its course, with lofty masting which glittered

at the sun’s farewell. And never before had Pierre so distinctly observed

the divisions of that human ocean. Eastward and northward was the city of

manual toil, with the rumbling and the smoke of its factories. Southward,

beyond the river, was the city of study, of intellectual labour, so calm,

so perfectly serene. And on all sides the passion of trade ascended from

the central districts, where the crowds rolled and scrambled amidst an

everlasting uproar of wheels; while westward, the city of the happy and

powerful ones, those who fought for sovereignty and wealth, spread out

its piles of palaces amidst the slowly reddening flare of the declining

planet.

And then, from the depths of his negation, the chaos into which his loss

of faith had plunged him, Pierre felt a delicious freshness pass like the

vague advent of a new faith. So vague it was that he could not have

expressed even his hope of it in words. But already among the rough

factory workers, manual toil had appeared to him necessary and

redemptive, in spite of all the misery and abominable injustice to which

it led. And now the young men of intellect of whom he had despaired, that

generation of the morrow which he had thought spoilt, relapsing into

ancient error and rottenness, had appeared to him full of virile promise,

resolved to prosecute the work of those who had gone before, and effect,

by the aid of Science only, the conquest of absolute truth and absolute

justice.

V. PROBLEMS

A FULL month had already gone by since Guillaume had taken refuge at his

brother’s little house at Neuilly. His wrist was now nearly healed. He

had long ceased to keep his bed, and often strolled through the garden.

In spite of his impatience to go back to Montmartre, join his loved ones

and resume his work there, he was each morning prompted to defer his

return by the news he found in the newspapers. The situation was ever the

same. Salvat, whom the police now suspected, had been perceived one

evening near the central markets, and then again lost sight of. Every

day, however, his arrest was said to be imminent. And in that case what

would happen? Would he speak out, and would fresh perquisitions be made?

For a whole week the press had been busy with the bradawl found under the

entrance of the Duvillard mansion. Nearly every reporter in Paris had

called at the Grandidier factory and interviewed both workmen and master.

Some had even started on personal investigations, in the hope of

capturing the culprit themselves. There was no end of jesting about the

incompetence of the police, and the hunt for Salvat was followed all the

more passionately by the general public, as the papers overflowed with

the most ridiculous concoctions, predicting further explosions, and

declaring even that all Paris would some morning be blown into the air.

The “Voix du Peuple” set a fresh shudder circulating every day by its

announcements of threatening letters, incendiary placards and mysterious,

far-reaching plots. And never before had so base and foolish a spirit of

contagion wafted insanity through a civilised city.

Guillaume, for his part, no sooner awoke of a morning than he was all

impatience to see the newspapers, quivering at the idea that he would at

last read of Salvat’s arrest. In his state of nervous expectancy, the

wild campaign which the press had started, the idiotic and the ferocious

things which he found in one or another journal, almost drove him crazy.

A number of “suspects” had already been arrested in a kind of chance

razzia, which had swept up the usual Anarchist herd, together with sundry

honest workmen and bandits, _illumines_ and lazy devils, in fact, a most

singular, motley crew, which investigating magistrate Amadieu was

endeavouring to turn into a gigantic association of evil-doers. One

morning, moreover, Guillaume found his own name mentioned in connection

with a perquisition at the residence of a revolutionary journalist, who

was a friend of his. At this his heart bounded with revolt, but he was

forced to the conclusion that it would be prudent for him to remain

patient a little longer, in his peaceful retreat at Neuilly, since the

police might at any moment break into his home at Montmartre, to arrest

him should it find him there.

Amidst all this anxiety the brothers led a most solitary and gentle life.

Pierre himself now spent most of his time at home. The first days of

March had come, and precocious springtide imparted delightful charm and

warmth to the little garden. Guillaume, however, since quitting his bed,

had more particularly installed himself in his father’s old laboratory,

now transformed into a spacious study. All the books and papers left by

the illustrious chemist were still there, and among the latter Guillaume

found a number of unfinished essays, the perusal of which greatly excited

his interest, and often absorbed him from morning till night. It was this

which largely enabled him to bear his voluntary seclusion patiently.

Seated on the other side of the big table, Pierre also mostly occupied

himself with reading; but at times his eyes would quit his book and

wander away into gloomy reverie, into all the chaos into which he still

and ever sank. For long hours the brothers would in this wise remain side

by side, without speaking a word. Yet they knew they were together; and

occasionally, when their eyes met, they would exchange a smile. The

strong affection of former days was again springing up within them; their

childhood, their home, their parents, all seemed to live once more in the

quiet atmosphere they breathed. However, the bay window overlooked the

garden in the direction of Paris, and often, when they emerged from their

reading or their reverie, it was with a sudden feeling of anxiety, and in

order to lend ear to the distant rumbling, the increased clamour of the

great city.

On other occasions they paused as if in astonishment at hearing a

continuous footfall overhead. It was that of Nicholas Barthes, who still

lingered in the room above. He seldom came downstairs, and scarcely ever

ventured into the garden, for fear, said he, that he might be perceived

and recognised from a distant house whose windows were concealed by a

clump of trees. One might laugh at the old conspirator’s haunting thought

of the police. Nevertheless, the caged-lion restlessness, the ceaseless

promenade of that perpetual prisoner who had spent two thirds of his life

in the dungeons of France in his desire to secure the liberty of others,

imparted to the silence of the little house a touching melancholy, the

very rhythm as it were of all the great good things which one hoped for,

but which would never perhaps come.

Very few visits drew the brothers from their solitude. Bertheroy came

less frequently now that Guillaume’s wrist was healing. The most

assiduous caller was certainly Theophile Morin, whose discreet ring was

heard every other day at the same hour. Though he did not share the ideas

of Barthes he worshipped him as a martyr; and would always go upstairs to

spend an hour with him. However, they must have exchanged few words, for

not a sound came from the room. Whenever Morin sat down for a moment in

the laboratory with the brothers, Pierre was struck by his seeming

weariness, his ashen grey hair and beard and dismal countenance, all the

life of which appeared to have been effaced by long years spent in the

teaching profession. Indeed, it was only when the priest mentioned Italy

that he saw his companion’s resigned eyes blaze up like live coals. One

day when he spoke of the great patriot Orlando Prada, Morin’s companion

of victory in Garibaldi’s days, he was amazed by the sudden flare of

enthusiasm which lighted up the other’s lifeless features. However, these

were but transient flashes: the old professor soon reappeared, and all

that one found in Morin was the friend of Proudhon and the subsequent

disciple of Auguste Comte. Of his Proudhonian principles he had retained

all a pauper’s hatred of wealth, and a desire for a more equitable

partition of fortune. But the new times dismayed him, and neither

principle nor temperament allowed him to follow Revolutionism to its

utmost limits. Comte had imparted unshakable convictions to him in the

sphere of intellectual questions, and he contented himself with the clear

and decisive logic of Positivism, rejecting all metaphysical hypotheses

as useless, persuaded as he was that the whole human question, whether

social or religious, would be solved by science alone. This faith, firm

as it had remained, was, however, coupled with secret bitterness, for

nothing seemed to advance in a sensible manner towards its goal. Comte

himself had ended in the most cloudy mysticism; great _savants_ recoiled

from truth in terror; and now barbarians were threatening the world with

fresh night; all of which made Morin almost a reactionist in politics,

already resigned to the advent of a dictator, who would set things

somewhat in order, so that humanity might be able to complete its

education.

Other visitors who occasionally called to see Guillaume were Bache and

Janzen, who invariably came together and at night-time. Every now and

then they would linger chatting with Guillaume in the spacious study

until two o’clock in the morning. Bache, who was fat and had a fatherly

air, with his little eyes gently beaming amidst all the snowy whiteness

of his hair and beard, would talk on slowly, unctuously and interminably,

as soon as he had begun to explain his views. He would address merely a

polite bow to Saint-Simon, the initiator, the first to lay down the law

that work was a necessity for one and all according to their capacities;

but on coming to Fourier his voice softened and he confessed his whole

religion. To his thinking, Fourier had been the real messiah of modern

times, the saviour of genius, who had sown the good seed of the future

world, by regulating society such as it would certainly be organised

to-morrow. The law of harmony had been promulgated; human passions,

liberated and utilised in healthy fashion, would become the requisite

machinery; and work, rendered pleasant and attractive, would prove the

very function of life. Nothing could discourage Bache; if merely one

parish began by transforming itself into a _phalansterium_, the whole

department would soon follow, then the adjacent departments, and finally

all France. Moreover, Bache even favoured the schemes of Cabet, whose

Icaria, said he, had in no wise been such a foolish idea. Further, he

recalled a motion he had made, when member of the Commune in 1871, to

apply Fourier’s ideas to the French Republic; and he was apparently

convinced that the troops of Versailles had delayed the triumph of

Communism for half a century. Whenever people nowadays talked of

table-turning he pretended to laugh, but at bottom he had remained an

impenitent “spiritist.” Since he had been a municipal councillor he had

been travelling from one socialist sect to another, according as their

ideas offered points of resemblance to his old faith. And he was fairly

consumed by his need of faith, his perplexity as to the Divine, which he

was now occasionally inclined to find in the legs of some piece of

furniture, after denying its presence in the churches.

Janzen, for his part, was as taciturn as his friend Bache was garrulous.

Such remarks as he made were brief, but they were as galling as lashes,

as cutting as sabre-strokes. At the same time his ideas and theories

remained somewhat obscure, partly by reason of this brevity of his, and

partly on account of the difficulty he experienced in expressing himself

in French. He was from over yonder, from some far-away land--Russia,

Poland, Austria or Germany, nobody exactly knew; and it mattered little,

for he certainly acknowledged no country, but wandered far and wide with

his dream of blood-shedding fraternity. Whenever, with his wonted

frigidity, he gave utterance to one of those terrible remarks of his

which, like a scythe in a meadow, cut away all before him, little less

than the necessity of thus mowing down nations, in order to sow the earth

afresh with a young and better community, became apparent. At each

proposition unfolded by Bache, such as labour rendered agreeable by

police regulations, _phalansteria_ organised like barracks, religion

transformed into pantheist or spiritist deism, he gently shrugged his

shoulders. What could be the use of such childishness, such hypocritical

repairing, when the house was falling and the only honest course was to

throw it to the ground, and build up the substantial edifice of to-morrow

with entirely new materials? On the subject of propaganda by deeds,

bomb-throwing and so forth, he remained silent, though his gestures were

expressive of infinite hope. He evidently approved that course. The

legend which made him one of the perpetrators of the crime of Barcelona

set a gleam of horrible glory in his mysterious past. One day when Bache,

while speaking to him of his friend Bergaz, the shadowy Bourse jobber who

had already been compromised in some piece of thieving, plainly declared

that the aforesaid Bergaz was a bandit, Janzen contented himself with

smiling, and replying quietly that theft was merely forced restitution.

Briefly, in this man of culture and refinement, in whose own mysterious

life one might perhaps have found various crimes but not a single act of

base improbity, one could divine an implacable, obstinate theoretician,

who was resolved to set the world ablaze for the triumph of his ideas.

On certain evenings when a visit from Theophile Morin coincided with one

from Bache and Janzen, and they and Guillaume lingered chatting until far

into the night, Pierre would listen to them in despair from the shadowy

corner where he remained motionless, never once joining in the

discussions. Distracted, by his own unbelief and thirst for truth, he had

at the outset taken a passionate interest in these debates, desirous as

he was of drawing up a balance-sheet of the century’s ideas, so as to

form some notion of the distance that had been travelled, and the profits

that had accrued. But he recoiled from all this in fresh despair, on

hearing the others argue, each from his own standpoint and without

possibility of concession and agreement. After the repulses he had

encountered at Lourdes and Rome, he well realised that in this fresh

experiment which he was making with Paris, the whole brain of the century

was in question, the new truths, the expected gospel which was to change

the face of the world. And, burning with inconsiderate zeal, he went from

one belief to another, which other he soon rejected in order to adopt a

third. If he had first felt himself to be a Positivist with Morin, an

Evolutionist and Determinist with Guillaume, he had afterwards been

touched by the fraternal dream of a new golden age which he had found in

Bache’s humanitarian Communism. And indeed even Janzen had momentarily

shaken him by his fierce confidence in the theory of liberative

Individualism. But afterwards he had found himself out of his depth; and

each and every theory had seemed to him but part of the chaotic

contradictions and incoherences of humanity on its march. It was all a

continuous piling up of dross, amidst which he lost himself. Although

Fourier had sprung from Saint-Simon he denied him in part; and if

Saint-Simon’s doctrine ended in a kind of mystical sensuality, the

other’s conducted to an unacceptable regimenting of society. Proudhon,

for his part, demolished without rebuilding anything. Comte, who created

method and declared science to be the one and only sovereign, had not

even suspected the advent of the social crisis which now threatened to

sweep all away, and had finished personally as a mere worshipper of love,

overpowered by woman. Nevertheless, these two, Comte and Proudhon,

entered the lists and fought against the others, Fourier and Saint-Simon;

the combat between them or their disciples becoming so bitter and so

blind that the truths common to them all were obscured and disfigured

beyond recognition. Thence came the extraordinary muddle of the present

hour; Bache with Saint-Simon and Fourier, and Morin with Proudhon and

Comte, utterly failing to understand Mege, the Collectivist deputy, whom

they held up to execration, him and his State Collectivism, in the same

way, moreover, as they thundered against all the other present-time

Socialist sects, without realising that these also, whatever their

nature, had more or less sprung from the same masters as themselves. And

all this seemingly indicated that Janzen was right when he declared that

the house was past repair, fast crumbling amidst rottenness and insanity,

and that it ought to be levelled to the ground.

One night, after the three visitors had gone, Pierre, who had remained

with Guillaume, saw him grow very gloomy as he slowly walked to and fro.

He, in his turn, had doubtless felt that all was crumbling. And though

his brother alone was there to hear him, he went on speaking. He

expressed all his horror of the Collectivist State as imagined by Mege, a

Dictator-State re-establishing ancient servitude on yet closer lines. The

error of all the Socialist sects was their arbitrary organisation of

Labour, which enslaved the individual for the profit of the community.

And, forced to conciliate the two great currents, the rights of society

and the rights of the individual, Guillaume had ended by placing his

whole faith in free Communism, an anarchical state in which he dreamt of

seeing the individual freed, moving and developing without restraint, for

the benefit both of himself and of all others. Was not this, said he, the

one truly scientific theory, unities creating worlds, atoms producing

life by force of attraction, free and ardent love? All oppressive

minorities would disappear; and the faculties and energies of one and all

would by free play arrive at harmony amidst the equilibrium--which

changed according to needs--of the active forces of advancing humanity.

In this wise he pictured a nation, saved from State tutelage, without a

master, almost without laws, a happy nation, each citizen of which,

completely developed by the exercise of liberty, would, of his free will,

come to an understanding with his neighbours with regard to the thousand

necessities of life. And thence would spring society, free association,

hundreds of associations which would regulate social life; though at the

same time they would remain variable, in fact often opposed and hostile

to one another. For progress is but the fruit of conflict and struggle;

the world has only been created by the battle of opposing forces. And

that was all; there would be no more oppressors, no more rich, no more

poor; the domain of the earth with its natural treasures and its

implements of labour would be restored to the people, its legitimate

owners, who would know how to enjoy it with justice and logic, when

nothing abnormal would impede their expansion. And then only would the

law of love make its action felt; then would human solidarity, which,

among mankind, is the living form of universal attraction, acquire all

its power, bringing men closer and closer together, and uniting them in

one sole family. A splendid dream it was--the noble and pure dream of

absolute freedom--free man in free society. And thither a _savant’s_

superior mind was fated to come after passing on the road the many

Socialist sects which one and all bore the stigma of tyranny. And,

assuredly, as thus indulged, the Anarchist idea is the loftiest, the

proudest, of all ideas. And how delightful to yield to the hope of

harmony in life--life which restored to the full exercise of its natural

powers would of itself create happiness!

When Guillaume ceased speaking, he seemed to be emerging from a dream;

and he glanced at Pierre with some dismay, for he feared that he might

have said too much and have hurt his feelings. Pierre--moved though he

was, for a moment in fact almost won over--had just seen the terrible

practical objection, which destroyed all hope, arise before his mind’s

eye. Why had not harmony asserted itself in the first days of the world’s

existence, at the time when societies were formed? How was it that

tyranny had triumphed, delivering nations over to oppressors? And

supposing that the apparently insolvable problem of destroying

everything, and beginning everything afresh, should ever be solved, who

could promise that mankind, obedient to the same laws, would not again

follow the same paths as formerly? After all, mankind, nowadays, is

simply what life has made it; and nothing proves that life would again

make it other than it is. To begin afresh, ah, yes! but to attain another

result! But could that other result really come from man? Was it not

rather man himself who should be changed? To start afresh from where one

was, to continue the evolution that had begun, undoubtedly meant slow

travel and dismal waiting. But how great would be the danger and even the

delay, if one went back without knowing by what road across the whole

chaos of ruins one might regain all the lost time!

“Let us go to bed,” at last said Guillaume, smiling. “It’s silly of me to

weary you with all these things which don’t concern you.”

Pierre, in his excitement, was about to reveal his own heart and mind,

and the whole torturing battle within him. But a feeling of shame again

restrained him. His brother only knew him as a believing priest, faithful

to his faith. And so, without answering, he betook himself to his room.

On the following evening, about ten o’clock, while Guillaume and Pierre

sat reading in the study, the old servant entered to announce M. Janzen

and a friend. The friend was Salvat.

“He wished to see you,” Janzen explained to Guillaume. “I met him, and

when he heard of your injury and anxiety he implored me to bring him

here. And I’ve done so, though it was perhaps hardly prudent of me.”

Guillaume had risen, full of surprise and emotion at such a visit;

Pierre, however, though equally upset by Salvat’s appearance; did not

stir from his chair, but kept his eyes upon the workman.

“Monsieur Froment,” Salvat ended by saying, standing there in a timid,

embarrassed way, “I was very sorry indeed when I heard of the worry I’d

put you in; for I shall never forget that you were very kind to me when

everybody else turned me away.”

As he spoke he balanced himself alternately on either leg, and

transferred his old felt hat from hand to hand.

“And so I wanted to come and tell you myself that if I took a cartridge

of your powder one evening when you had your back turned, it’s the only

thing that I feel any remorse about in the whole business, since it may

compromise you. And I also want to take my oath before you that you’ve

nothing to fear from me, that I’ll let my head be cut off twenty times if

need be, rather than utter your name. That’s all that I had in my heart.”

He relapsed into silence and embarrassment, but his soft, dreamy eyes,

the eyes of a faithful dog, remained fixed upon Guillaume with an

expression of respectful worship. And Pierre was still gazing at him

athwart the hateful vision which his arrival had conjured up, that of the

poor, dead, errand girl, the fair pretty child lying ripped open under

the entrance of the Duvillard mansion! Was it possible that he was there,

he, that madman, that murderer, and that his eyes were actually moist!

Guillaume, touched by Salvat’s words, had drawn near and pressed his

hand. “I am well aware, Salvat,” said he, “that you are not wicked at

heart. But what a foolish and abominable thing you did!”

Salvat showed no sign of anger, but gently smiled. “Oh! if it had to be

done again, Monsieur Froment, I’d do it. It’s my idea, you know. And,

apart from you, all is well; I am content.”

He would not sit down, but for another moment continued talking with

Guillaume, while Janzen, as if he washed his hands of the business,

deeming this visit both useless and dangerous, sat down and turned over

the leaves of a picture book. And Guillaume made Salvat tell him what he

had done on the day of the crime; how like a stray dog he had wandered in

distraction through Paris, carrying his bomb with him, originally in his

tool-bag and then under his jacket; how he had gone a first time to the

Duvillard mansion and found its carriage entrance closed; then how he had

betaken himself first to the Chamber of Deputies which the ushers had

prevented him from entering, and afterwards to the Circus, where the

thought of making a great sacrifice of _bourgeois_ had occurred to him

too late. And finally, how he had at last come back to the Duvillard

mansion, as if drawn thither by the very power of destiny. His tool-bag

was lying in the depths of the Seine, he said; he had thrown it into the

water with sudden hatred of work, since it had even failed to give him

bread. And he next told the story of his flight; the explosion shaking

the whole district behind him, while, with delight and astonishment, he

found himself some distance off, in quiet streets where nothing was as

yet known. And for a month past he had been living in chance fashion, how

or where he could hardly tell, but he had often slept in the open, and

gone for a day without food. One evening little Victor Mathis had given

him five francs. And other comrades had helped him, taken him in for a

night and sent him off at the first sign of peril. A far-spreading, tacit

complicity had hitherto saved him from the police. As for going abroad,

well, he had, at one moment, thought of doing so; but a description of

his person must have been circulated, the gendarmes must be waiting for

him at the frontiers, and so would not flight, instead of retarding,

rather hasten his arrest? Paris, however, was an ocean; it was there that

he incurred the least risk of capture. Moreover, he no longer had

sufficient energy to flee. A fatalist as he was after his own fashion, he

could not find strength to quit the pavements of Paris, but there awaited

arrest, like a social waif carried chancewise through the multitude as in

a dream.

“And your daughter, little Celine?” Guillaume inquired. “Have you

ventured to go back to see her?”

Salvat waved his hand in a vague way. “No, but what would you have? She’s

with Mamma Theodore. Women always find some help. And then I’m done for,

I can do nothing for anybody. It’s as if I were already dead.” However,

in spite of these words, tears were rising to his eyes. “Ah! the poor

little thing!” he added, “I kissed her with all my heart before I went

away. If she and the woman hadn’t been starving so long the idea of that

business would perhaps never have come to me.”

Then, in all simplicity, he declared that he was ready to die. If he had

ended by depositing his bomb at the entrance of Duvillard’s house, it was

because he knew the banker well, and was aware that he was the wealthiest

of those _bourgeois_ whose fathers at the time of the Revolution had

duped the people, by taking all power and wealth for themselves,--the

power and wealth which the sons were nowadays so obstinately bent in

retaining that they would not even bestow the veriest crumbs on others.

As for the Revolution, he understood it in his own fashion, like an

illiterate fellow who had learnt the little he knew from newspapers and

speeches at public meetings. And he struck his chest with his fist as he

spoke of his honesty, and was particularly desirous that none should

doubt his courage because he had fled.

“I’ve never robbed anybody,” said he, “and if I don’t go and hand myself

up to the police, it’s because they may surely take the trouble to find

and arrest me. I’m very well aware that my affair’s clear enough as

they’ve found that bradawl and know me. All the same, it would be silly

of me to help them in their work. Still, they’d better make haste, for

I’ve almost had enough of being tracked like a wild beast and no longer

knowing how I live.”

Janzen, yielding to curiosity, had ceased turning over the leaves of the

picture book and was looking at Salvat. There was a smile of disdain in

the Anarchist leader’s cold eyes; and in his usual broken French he

remarked: “A man fights and defends himself, kills others and tries to

avoid being killed himself. That’s warfare.”

These words fell from his lips amidst deep silence. Salvat, however, did

not seem to have heard them, but stammered forth his faith in a long

sentence laden with fulsome expressions, such as the sacrifice of his

life in order that want might cease, and the example of a great action,

in the certainty that it would inspire other heroes to continue the

struggle. And with this certainly sincere faith and illuminism of his

there was blended a martyr’s pride, delight at being one of the radiant,

worshipped saints of the dawning Revolutionary Church.

As he had come so he went off. When Janzen had led him away, it seemed as

if the night which had brought him had carried him back into its

impenetrable depths. And then only did Pierre rise from his chair. He was

stifling, and threw the large window of the room wide open. It was a very

mild but moonless night, whose silence was only disturbed by the

subsiding clamour of Paris, which stretched away, invisible, on the

horizon.

Guillaume, according to his habit, had begun to walk up and down. And at

last he spoke, again forgetting that his brother was a priest. “Ah! the

poor fellow! How well one can understand that deed of violence and hope!

His whole past life of fruitless labour and ever-growing want explains

it. Then, too, there has been all the contagion of ideas; the

frequentation of public meetings where men intoxicate themselves with

words, and of secret meetings among comrades where faith acquires

firmness and the mind soars wildly. Ah! I think I know that man well

indeed! He’s a good workman, sober and courageous. Injustice has always

exasperated him. And little by little the desire for universal happiness

has cast him out of the realities of life which he has ended by holding

in horror. So how can he do otherwise than live in a dream--a dream of

redemption, which, from circumstances, has turned to fire and murder as

its fitting instruments. As I looked at him standing there, I fancied I

could picture one of the first Christian slaves of ancient Rome. All the

iniquity of olden pagan society, agonising beneath the rottenness born of

debauchery and covetousness, was weighing on his shoulders, bearing him

down. He had come from the dark Catacombs where he had whispered words of

deliverance and redemption with his wretched brethren. And a thirst for

martyrdom consumed him, he spat in the face of Caesar, he insulted the

gods, he fired the pagan temples, in order that the reign of Jesus might

come and abolish servitude. And he was ready to die, to be torn to pieces

by the wild beasts!”

Pierre did not immediately reply. He had already been struck, however, by

the fact that there were undoubted points of resemblance between the

secret propaganda and militant faith of the Anarchists, and certain

practices of the first Christians. Both sects abandon themselves to a new

faith in the hope that the humble may thereby at last reap justice.

Paganism disappears through weariness of the flesh and the need of a more

lofty and pure faith. That dream of a Christian paradise opening up a

future life with a system of compensations for the ills endured on earth,

was the outcome of young hope dawning at its historic hour. But to-day,

when eighteen centuries have exhausted that hope, when the long

experiment is over and the toiler finds himself duped and still and ever

a slave, he once more dreams of getting happiness upon this earth,

particularly as each day Science tends more and more to show him that the

happiness of the spheres beyond is a lie. And in all this there is but

the eternal struggle of the poor and the rich, the eternal question of

bringing more justice and less suffering to the world.

“But surely,” Pierre at last replied, “you can’t be on the side of those

bandits, those murderers whose savage violence horrifies me. I let you

talk on yesterday, when you dreamt of a great and happy people, of ideal

anarchy in which each would be free amidst the freedom of all. But what

abomination, what disgust both for mind and heart, when one passes from

theory to propaganda and practice! If yours is the brain that thinks,

whose is the hateful hand that acts, that kills children, throws down

doors and empties drawers? Do you accept that responsibility? With your

education, your culture, the whole social heredity behind you, does not

your entire being revolt at the idea of stealing and murdering?”

Guillaume halted before his brother, quivering. “Steal and murder! no!

no! I will not. But one must say everything and fully understand the

history of the evil hour through which we are passing. It is madness

sweeping by; and, to tell the truth, everything necessary to provoke it

has been done. At the very dawn of the Anarchist theory, at the very

first innocent actions of its partisans, there was such stern repression,

the police so grossly ill-treating the poor devils that fell into its

hands, that little by little came anger and rage leading to the most

horrible reprisals. It is the Terror initiated by the _bourgeois_ that

has produced Anarchist savagery. And would you know whence Salvat and his

crime have come? Why, from all our centuries of impudence and iniquity,

from all that the nations have suffered, from all the sores which are now

devouring us, the impatience for enjoyment, the contempt of the strong

for the weak, the whole monstrous spectacle which is presented by our

rotting society!”

Guillaume was again slowly walking to and fro; and as if he were

reflecting aloud he continued: “Ah! to reach the point I have attained,

through how much thought, through how many battles, have I not passed! I

was merely a Positivist, a _savant_ devoted to observation and

experiment, accepting nothing apart from proven facts. Scientifically and

socially, I admitted that simple evolution had slowly brought humanity

into being. But both in the history of the globe and that of human

society, I found it necessary to make allowance for the volcano, the

sudden cataclysm, the sudden eruption, by which each geological phase,

each historical period, has been marked. In this wise one ends by

ascertaining that no forward step has ever been taken, no progress ever

accomplished in the world’s history, without the help of horrible

catastrophes. Each advance has meant the sacrifice of millions and

millions of human lives. This of course revolts us, given our narrow

ideas of justice, and we regard nature as a most barbarous mother; but,

if we cannot excuse the volcano, we ought to deal with it when it bursts

forth, like _savants_ forewarned of its possibility.... And then, ah,

then! well, perhaps I’m a dreamer like others, but I have my own

notions.”

With a sweeping gesture he confessed what a social dreamer there was

within him beside the methodical and scrupulous _savant_. His constant

endeavour was to bring all back to science, and he was deeply grieved at

finding in nature no scientific sign of equality or even justice, such as

he craved for in the social sphere. His despair indeed came from this

inability to reconcile scientific logic with apostolic love, the dream of

universal happiness and brotherhood and the end of all iniquity.

Pierre, however, who had remained near the open window, gazing into the

night towards Paris, whence ascended the last sounds of the evening of

passionate pleasure, felt the whole flood of his own doubt and despair

stifling him. It was all too much: that brother of his who had fallen

upon him with his scientific and apostolic beliefs, those men who came to

discuss contemporary thought from every standpoint, and finally that

Salvat who had brought thither the exasperation of his mad deed. And

Pierre, who had hitherto listened to them all without a word, without a

gesture, who had hidden his secrets from his brother, seeking refuge in

his supposed priestly views, suddenly felt such bitterness stirring his

heart that he could lie no longer.

“Ah! brother, if you have your dream, I have my sore which has eaten into

me and left me void! Your Anarchy, your dream of just happiness, for

which Salvat works with bombs, why, it is the final burst of insanity

which will sweep everything away! How is it that you can’t realise it?

The century is ending in ruins. I’ve been listening to you all for a

month past. Fourier destroyed Saint-Simon, Proudhon and Comte demolished

Fourier, each in turn piling up incoherences and contradictions, leaving

mere chaos behind them, which nobody dares to sort out. And since then,

Socialist sects have been swarming and multiplying, the more sensible of

them leading simply to dictatorship, while the others indulge in most

dangerous reveries. And after such a tempest of ideas there could indeed

come nothing but your Anarchy, which undertakes to bring the old world to

a finish by reducing it to dust.... Ah! I expected it, I was waiting

for it--that final catastrophe, that fratricidal madness, the inevitable

class warfare in which our civilisation was destined to collapse!

Everything announced it: the want and misery below, the egotism up above,

all the cracking of the old human habitation, borne down by too great a

weight of crime and grief. When I went to Lourdes it was to see if the

divinity of simple minds would work the awaited miracle, and restore the

belief of the early ages to the people, which rebelled through excess of

suffering. And when I went to Rome it was in the _naive_ hope of there

finding the new religion required by our democracies, the only one that

could pacify the world by bringing back the fraternity of the golden age.

But how foolish of me all that was! Both here and there, I simply lighted

on nothingness. There where I so ardently dreamt of finding the salvation

of others, I only sank myself, going down apeak like a ship not a timber

of which is ever found again. One tie still linked me to my fellow-men,

that of charity, the dressing, relieving, and perhaps, in the long run,

healing, of wounds and sores; but that last cable has now been severed.

Charity, to my mind, appears futile and derisive by the side of justice,

to whom all supremacy belongs, and whose advent has become a necessity

and can be stayed by none. And so it is all over, I am mere ashes, an

empty grave as it were. I no longer believe in anything, anything,

anything whatever!”

Pierre had risen to his full height, with arms outstretched as if to let

all the nothingness within his heart and mind fall from them. And

Guillaume, distracted by the sight of such a fierce denier, such a

despairing Nihilist as was now revealed to him, drew near, quivering:

“What are you saying, brother! I thought you so firm, so calm in your

belief! A priest to be admired, a saint worshipped by the whole of this

parish! I was unwilling even to discuss your faith, and now it is you who

deny all, and believe in nothing whatever!”

Pierre again slowly stretched out his arms. “There is nothing, I tried to

learn all, and only found the atrocious grief born of the nothingness

that overwhelms me.”

“Ah! how you must suffer, Pierre, my little brother! Can religion, then,

be even more withering than science, since it has ravaged you like that,

while I have yet remained an old madman, still full of fancies?”

Guillaume caught hold of Pierre’s hands and pressed them, full of

terrified compassion in presence of all the grandeur and horror embodied

in that unbelieving priest who watched over the belief of others, and

chastely, honestly discharged his duty amidst the haughty sadness born of

his falsehood. And how heavily must that falsehood have weighed upon his

conscience for him to confess himself in that fashion, amidst an utter

collapse of his whole being! A month previously, in the unexpansiveness

of his proud solitude, he would never have taken such a course. To speak

out it was necessary that he should have been stirred by many things, his

reconciliation with his brother, the conversations he had heard of an

evening, the terrible drama in which he was mingled, as well as his

reflections on labour struggling against want, and the vague hope with

which the sight of intellectual youth had inspired him. And, indeed, amid

the very excess of his negation was there not already the faint dawn of a

new faith?

This Guillaume must have understood, on seeing how he quivered with

unsatisfied tenderness as he emerged from the fierce silence which he had

preserved so long. He made him sit down near the window, and placed

himself beside him without releasing his hands. “But I won’t have you

suffer, my little brother!” he said; “I won’t leave you, I’ll nurse you.

For I know you much better than you know yourself. You would never have

suffered were it not for the battle between your heart and your mind, and

you will cease to suffer on the day when they make peace, and you love

what you understand.” And in a lower voice, with infinite affection, he

went on: “You see, it’s our poor mother and our poor father continuing

their painful struggle in you. You were too young at the time, you

couldn’t know what went on. But I knew them both very wretched: he,

wretched through her, who treated him as if he were one of the damned;

and she, suffering through him, tortured by his irreligion. When he died,

struck down by an explosion in this very room, she took it to be the

punishment of God. Yet, what an honest man he was, with a good, great

heart, what a worker, seeking for truth alone, and desirous of the love

and happiness of all! Since we have spent our evenings here, I have felt

him coming back, reviving as it were both around and within us; and she,

too, poor, saintly woman, is ever here, enveloping us with love, weeping,

and yet stubbornly refusing to understand. It is they, perhaps, who have

kept me here so long, and who at this very moment are present to place

your hands in mine.”

And, indeed, it seemed to Pierre as if he could feel the breath of

vigilant affection which Guillaume evoked passing over them both. There

was again a revival of all the past, all their youth, and nothing could

have been more delightful.

“You hear me, brother,” Guillaume resumed. “You must reconcile them, for

it is only in you that they can be reconciled. You have his firm, lofty

brow, and her mouth and eyes of unrealisable tenderness. So, try to bring

them to agreement, by some day contenting, as your reason shall allow,

the everlasting thirst for love, and self-bestowal, and life, which for

lack of satisfaction is killing you. Your frightful wretchedness has no

other cause. Come back to life, love, bestow yourself, be a man!”

Pierre raised a dolorous cry: “No, no, the death born of doubt has swept

through me, withering and shattering everything, and nothing more can

live in that cold dust!”

“But, come,” resumed Guillaume, “you cannot have reached such absolute

negation. No man reaches it. Even in the most disabused of minds there

remains a nook of fancy and hope. To deny charity, devotion, the

prodigies which love may work, ah! for my part I do not go so far as

that. And now that you have shown me your sore, why should I not tell you

my dream, the wild hope which keeps me alive! It is strange; but, are

_savants_ to be the last childish dreamers, and is faith only to spring

up nowadays in chemical laboratories?”

Intense emotion was stirring Guillaume; there was battle waging in both

his brain and his heart. And at last, yielding to the deep compassion

which filled him, vanquished by his ardent affection for his unhappy

brother, he spoke out. But he had drawn yet closer to Pierre, even passed

one arm around him; and it was thus embracing him that he, in his turn,

made his confession, lowering his voice as if he feared that someone

might overhear his secret. “Why should you not know it?” he said. “My own

sons are ignorant of it. But you are a man and my brother, and since

there is nothing of the priest left in you, it is to the brother I will

confide it. This will make me love you the more, and perhaps it may do

you good.”

Then he told him of his invention, a new explosive, a powder of such

extraordinary force that its effects were incalculable. And he had found

employment for this powder in an engine of warfare, a special cannon,

hurling bombs which would assure the most overwhelming victory to the

army using them. The enemy’s forces would be destroyed in a few hours,

and besieged cities would fall into dust at the slightest bombardment. He

had long searched and doubted, calculated, recalculated and experimented;

but everything was now ready: the precise formula of the powder, the

drawings for the cannon and the bombs, a whole packet of precious papers

stored in a safe spot. And after months of anxious reflection he had

resolved to give his invention to France, so as to ensure her a certainty

of victory in her coming, inevitable war with Germany!

At the same time, he was not a man of narrow patriotism; on the contrary

he had a very broad, international conception of the future liberative

civilisation. Only he believed in the initiatory mission of France, and

particularly in that of Paris, which, even as it is to-day, was destined

to be the world’s brain to-morrow, whence all science and justice would

proceed. The great idea of liberty and equality had already soared from

it at the prodigious blast of the Revolution; and from its genius and

valour the final emancipation of man would also take its flight. Thus it

was necessary that Paris should be victorious in the struggle in order

that the world might be saved.

Pierre understood his brother, thanks to the lecture on explosives which

he had heard at Bertheroy’s. And the grandeur of this scheme, this dream,

particularly struck him when he thought of the extraordinary future which

would open for Paris amidst the effulgent blaze of the bombs. Moreover,

he was struck by all the nobility of soul which had lain behind his

brother’s anxiety for a month past. If Guillaume had trembled it was

simply with fear that his invention might be divulged in consequence of

Salvat’s crime. The slightest indiscretion might compromise everything;

and that little stolen cartridge, whose effects had so astonished

_savants_, might reveal his secret. He felt it necessary to act in

mystery, choosing his own time, awaiting the proper hour, until when the

secret would slumber in its hiding-place, confided to the sole care of

Mere-Grand, who had her orders and knew what she was to do should he, in

any sudden accident, disappear.

“And, now,” said Guillaume in conclusion, “you know my hopes and my

anguish, and you can help me and even take my place if I am unable to

reach the end of my task. Ah! to reach the end! Since I have been shut up

here, reflecting, consumed by anxiety and impatience, there have been

hours when I have ceased to see my way clearly! There is that Salvat,

that wretched fellow for whose crime we are all of us responsible, and

who is now being hunted down like a wild beast! There is also that

insensate and insatiable _bourgeoisie_, which will let itself be crushed

by the fall of the shaky old house, rather than allow the least repair to

it! And there is further that avaricious, that abominable Parisian press,

so harsh towards the weak and little, so fond of insulting those who have

none to defend them, so eager to coin money out of public misfortune, and

ready to spread insanity on all sides, simply to increase its sales!

Where, therefore, shall one find truth and justice, the hand endowed with

logic and health that ought to be armed with the thunderbolt? Would Paris

the conqueror, Paris the master of the nations, prove the justiciar, the

saviour that men await! Ah! the anguish of believing oneself to be the

master of the world’s destinies, and to have to choose and decide.”

He had risen again quivering, full of anger and fear that human

wretchedness and baseness might prevent the realisation of his dream. And

amidst the heavy silence which fell in the room, the little house

suddenly resounded with a regular, continuous footfall.

“Ah, yes! to save men and love them, and wish them all to be equal and

free,” murmured Pierre, bitterly. “But just listen! Barthes’s footsteps

are answering you, as if from the everlasting dungeon into which his love

of liberty has thrown him!”

However, Guillaume had already regained possession of himself, and coming

back in a transport of his faith, he once more took Pierre in his loving,

saving arms, like an elder brother who gives himself without restraint.

“No, no, I’m wrong, I’m blaspheming,” he exclaimed; “I wish you to be

with me, full of hope and full of certainty. You must work, you must

love, you must revive to life. Life alone can give you back peace and

health.”

Tears returned to the eyes of Pierre, who was penetrated to the heart by

this ardent affection. “Ah! how I should like to believe you,” he

faltered, “and try to cure myself. True, I have already felt, as it were,

a vague revival within me. And yet to live again, no, I cannot; the

priest that I am is dead--a lifeless, an empty tomb.”

He was shaken by so frightful a sob, that Guillaume could not restrain

his own tears. And clasped in one another’s arms the brothers wept on,

their hearts full of the softest emotion in that home of their youth,

whither the dear shadows of their parents ever returned, hovering around

until they should be reconciled and restored to the peace of the earth.

And all the darkness and mildness of the garden streamed in through the

open window, while yonder, on the horizon, Paris had fallen asleep in the

mysterious gloom, beneath a very peaceful sky which was studded with

stars.