THE ENDLESS HISTORY
Alca is becoming Americanised.—_M. Daniset_.
And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the
inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the
ground.—_Genesis xix_. 25
Γῇ Ἑλλάδι πενίη μὲν αἐι κοτε σύντροφος ἐστι, ἀρετὴ δὲ ἔπακτός ἐστι, ἀπό
τε σοφίης κατεργασμένη καὶ νόμου ἰσχυροῦ.[13] (Herodotus, Histories,
VII cii.)
[13] Poverty hast ever been familiar to Greece, but virtue has been
acquired, having been accomplished by wisdom and firm laws.
—Henry Cary’s Translation.
You have not seen angels then.—_Liber Terribilis_.
Bqsfttfusftpvtusbjufbmbvupsjufeftspjtf
ueftfnqfsfvstbqsftbxpjsqspdmbnfuspjtgpjt
tbmjcfsufmbgsbodftftutpvnjtfbeftdpnqbh
ojftgjobodjfsftrvjejtqptfoueftsjdifttftevqb
ztfuqbsmfnpzfoevofqsfttfbdifuffejsjhfoum
pqjojpo
_Voufnpjoxfsjejrvf_
We are now beginning to study a chemistry which will deal with effects
produced by bodies containing a quantity of concentrated energy the
like of which we have not yet had at our disposal.—_Sir William
Ramsay_.
§. I
The houses were never high enough to satisfy them; they kept on making
them still higher and built them of thirty or forty storeys: with
offices, shops, banks, societies one above another; they dug cellars
and tunnels ever deeper downwards.
Fifteen millions of men laboured in a giant town by the light of
beacons which shed forth their glare both day and night. No light of
heaven pierced through the smoke of the factories with which the town
was girt, but sometimes the red disk of a rayless sun might be seen
riding in the black firmament through which iron bridges ploughed their
way, and from which there descended a continual shower of soot and
cinders. It was the most industrial of all the cities in the world and
the richest. Its organisation seemed perfect. None of the ancient
aristocratic or democratic forms remained; everything was subordinated
to the interests of the trusts. This environment gave rise to what
anthropologists called the multi-millionaire type. The men of this type
were at once energetic and frail, capable of great activity in forming
mental combinations and of prolonged labour in offices, but men whose
nervous irritability suffered from hereditary troubles which increased
as time went on.
Like all true aristocrats, like the patricians of republican Rome or
the squires of old England, these powerful men affected a great
severity in their habits and customs. They were the ascetics of wealth.
At the meetings of the trusts an observer would have noticed their
smooth and puffy faces, their lantern cheeks, their sunken eyes and
wrinkled brows. With bodies more withered, complexions yellower, lips
drier, and eyes filled with a more burning fanaticism than those of the
old Spanish monks, these multimillionaires gave themselves up with
inextinguishable ardour to the austerities of banking and industry.
Several, denying themselves all happiness, all pleasure, and all rest,
spent their miserable lives in rooms without light or air, furnished
only with electrical apparatus, living on eggs and milk, and sleeping
on camp beds. By doing nothing except pressing nickel buttons with
their fingers, these mystics heaped up riches of which they never even
saw the signs, and acquired the vain possibility of gratifying desires
that they never experienced.
The worship of wealth had its martyrs. One of these multi-millionaires,
the famous Samuel Box, preferred to die rather than surrender the
smallest atom of his property. One of his workmen, the victim of an
accident while at work, being refused any indemnity by his employer,
obtained a verdict in the courts, but repelled by innumerable obstacles
of procedure, he fell into the direst poverty. Being thus reduced to
despair, he succeeded by dint of cunning and audacity in confronting
his employer with a loaded revolver in his hand, and threatened to blow
out his brains if he did not give him some assistance. Samuel Box gave
nothing, and let himself be killed for the sake of principle.
Examples that come from high quarters are followed. Those who possessed
some small capital (and they were necessarily the greater number),
affected the ideas and habits of the multi-millionaires, in order that
they might be classed among them. All passions which injured the
increase or the preservation of wealth, were regarded as dishonourable;
neither indolence, nor idleness, nor the taste for disinterested study,
nor love of the arts, nor, above all, extravagance, was ever forgiven;
pity was condemned as a dangerous weakness. Whilst every inclination to
licentiousness excited public reprobation, the violent and brutal
satisfaction of an appetite was, on the contrary, excused; violence, in
truth, was regarded as less injurious to morality, since it manifested
a form of social energy. The State was firmly based on two great public
virtues: respect for the rich and contempt for the poor. Feeble spirits
who were still moved by human suffering had no other resource than to
take refuge in a hypocrisy which it was impossible to blame, since it
contributed to the maintenance of order and the solidity of
institutions.
Thus, among the rich, all were devoted to their social order, or seemed
to be so; all gave good examples, if all did not follow them. Some felt
the gravity of their position cruelly; but they endured it either from
pride or from duty. Some attempted, in secret and by subterfuge, to
escape from it for a moment. One of these, Edward Martin, the
President, of the Steel Trust, sometimes dressed himself as a poor man,
went forth to beg his bread, and allowed himself to be jostled by the
passers-by. One day, as he asked alms on a bridge, he engaged in a
quarrel with a real beggar, and filled with a fury of envy, he
strangled him.
As they devoted their whole intelligence to business, they sought no
intellectual pleasures. The theatre, which had formerly been very
flourishing among them, was now reduced to pantomimes and comic dances.
Even the pieces in which women acted were given up; the taste for
pretty forms and brilliant toilettes had been lost; the somersaults of
clowns and the music of negroes were preferred above them, and what
roused enthusiasm was the sight of women upon the stage whose necks
were bedizened with diamonds, or processions carrying golden bars in
triumph. Ladies of wealth were as much compelled as the men to lead a
respectable life. According to a tendency common to all civilizations,
public feeling set them up as symbols; they were, by their austere
magnificence, to represent both the splendour of wealth and its
intangibility. The old habits of gallantry had been reformed, Tut
fashionable lovers were now secretly replaced by muscular labourers or
stray grooms. Nevertheless, scandals were rare, a foreign journey
concealed nearly all of them, and the Princesses of the Trusts remained
objects of universal esteem.
The rich formed only a small minority, but their collaborators, who
composed the entire people, had been completely won over or completely
subjugated by them. They formed two classes, the agents of commerce or
banking, and workers in the factories. The former contributed an
immense amount of work and received large salaries. Some of them
succeeded in founding establishments of their own; for in the constant
increase of the public wealth the more intelligent and audacious could
hope for anything. Doubtless it would have been possible to find a
certain number of discontented and rebellious persons among the immense
crowd of engineers and accountants, but this powerful society had
imprinted its firm discipline even on the minds of its opponents. The
very anarchists were laborious and regular.
As for the workmen who toiled in the factories that surrounded the
town, their decadence, both physical and moral, was terrible; they were
examples of the type of poverty as it is set forth by anthropology.
Although the development among them of certain muscles, due to the
particular nature of their work, might give a false idea of their
strength, they presented sure signs of morbid debility. Of low stature,
with small heads and narrow chests, they were further distinguished
from the comfortable classes by a multitude of physiological anomalies,
and, in particular, by a common want of symmetry between the head and
the limbs. And they were destined to a gradual and continuous
degeneration, for the State made soldiers of the more robust among
them, and the health of these did not long withstand the brothels and
the drink-shops that sprang up around their barracks. The proletarians
became more and more feeble in mind. The continued weakening of their
intellectual faculties was not entirely due to their manner of life; it
resulted also from a methodical selection carried out by the employers.
The latter, fearing that workmen of too great ability might be inclined
to put forward legitimate demands, took care to eliminate them by every
possible means, and preferred to engage ignorant and stupid labourers,
who were incapable of defending their rights, but were yet intelligent
enough to perform their toil, which highly perfected machines rendered
extremely simple. Thus the proletarians were unable to do anything to
improve their lot. With difficulty did they succeed by means of strikes
in maintaining the rate of their wages. Even this means began to fail
them. The alternations of production inherent in the capitalist system
caused such cessations of work that, in several branches of industry,
as soon as a strike was declared, the accumulation of products allowed
the employers to dispense with the strikers. In a word, these miserable
employees were plunged in a gloomy apathy that nothing enlightened and
nothing exasperated. They were necessary instruments for the social
order and well adapted to their purpose.
Upon the whole, this social order seemed the most firmly established
that had yet been seen, at least among kind, for that of bees and ants
is incomparably more stable. Nothing could foreshadow the ruin of a
system founded on what is strongest in human nature, pride and
cupidity. However, keen observers discovered several grounds for
uneasiness. The most certain, although the least apparent, were of an
economic order, and consisted in the continually increasing amount of
over-production, which entailed long and cruel interruptions of labour,
though these were, it is true, utilized by the manufacturers as a means
of breaking the power of the workmen, by facing them with the prospect
of a lock-out. A more obvious peril resulted from the physiological
state of almost the entire population. “The health of the poor is what
it must be,” said the experts in hygiene, “but that of the rich leaves
much to be desired.” It was not difficult to find the causes of this.
The supply of oxygen necessary for life was insufficient in the city,
and men breathed in an artificial air. The food trusts, by means of the
most daring chemical syntheses, produced artificial wines, meat, milk,
fruit, and vegetables, and the diet thus imposed gave rise to stomach
and brain troubles. The multi-millionaires were bald at the age of
eighteen; some showed from time to time a dangerous weakness of mind.
Over-strung and enfeebled, they gave enormous sums to ignorant
charlatans; and it was a common thing for some bath-attendant or other
trumpery who turned healer or prophet, to make a rapid fortune by the
practice of medicine or theology. The number of lunatics increased
continually; suicides multiplied in the world of wealth, and many of
them were accompanied by atrocious and extraordinary circumstances,
which bore witness to an unheard of perversion of intelligence and
sensibility.
Another fatal symptom created a strong impression upon average minds.
Terrible accidents, henceforth periodical and regular, entered into
people’s calculations, and kept mounting higher and higher in
statistical tables. Every day, machines burst into fragments, houses
fell down, trains laden with merchandise fell on to the streets,
demolishing entire buildings and crushing hundreds of passers-by.
Through the ground, honey-combed with tunnels, two or three storeys of
work-shops would often crash, engulfing all those who worked in them.
§. 2
In the southwestern district of the city, on an eminence which had
preserved its ancient name of Fort Saint-Michel, there stretched a
square where some old trees still spread their exhausted arms above the
greensward. Landscape gardeners had constructed a cascade, grottos, a
torrent, a lake, and an island, on its northern slope. From this side
one could see the whole town with its streets, its boulevards, its
squares, the multitude of its roofs and domes, its air-passages, and
its crowds of men, covered with a veil of silence, and seemingly
enchanted by the distance. This square was the healthiest place in the
capital; here no smoke obscured the sky, and children were brought here
to play. In summer some employees from the neighbouring offices and
laboratories used to resort to it for a moment after their luncheons,
but they did not disturb its solitude and peace.
It was owing to this custom that, one day in June, about mid-day, a
telegraph clerk, Caroline Meslier, came and sat down on a bench at the
end of a terrace. In order to refresh her eyes by the sight of a little
green, she turned her back to the town. Dark, with brown eyes, robust
and placid, Caroline appeared to be from twenty-five to twenty-eight
years of age. Almost immediately, a clerk in the Electricity Trust,
George Clair, took his place beside her. Fair, thin, and supple, he had
features of a feminine delicacy; he was scarcely older than she, and
looked still younger. As they met almost every day in this place, a
comradeship had sprung up between them, and they enjoyed chatting
together. But their conversation had never been tender, affectionate,
or even intimate. Caroline, although it had happened to her in the past
to repent of her confidence, might perhaps have been less reserved had
not George Clair always shown himself extremely restrained in his
expressions and behaviour. He always gave a purely intellectual
character to the conversation, keeping it within the realm of general
ideas, and, moreover, expressing himself on all subjects with the
greatest freedom. He spoke frequently of the organization of society,
and the conditions of labour.
“Wealth,” said he, “is one of the means of living happily; but people
have made it the sole end of existence.”
And this state of things seemed monstrous to both of them.
They returned continually to various scientific subjects with which
they were both familiar.
On that day they discussed the evolution of chemistry.
“From the moment,” said Clair, “that radium was seen to be transformed
into helium, people ceased to affirm the immutability of simple bodies;
in this way all those old laws about simple relations and about the
indestructibility of matter were abolished.”
“However,” said she, “chemical laws exist.”
For, being a woman, she had need of belief.
He resumed carelessly:
“Now that we can procure radium in sufficient quantities, science
possesses incomparable means of analysis; even at present we get
glimpses, within what are called simple bodies, of extremely
diversified complex ones, and we discover energies in matter which seem
to increase even by reason of its tenuity.”
As they talked, they threw bits of bread to the birds, and some
children played around them.
Passing from one subject to another:
“This hill, in the quaternary epoch,” said Clair, “was inhabited by
wild horses. Last year, as they were tunnelling for the water mains,
they found a layer of the bones of primeval horses.”
She was anxious to know whether, at that distant epoch, man had yet
appeared.
He told her that man used to hunt the primeval horse long before he
tried to domesticate him.
“Man,” he added, “was at first a hunter, then he became a shepherd, a
cultivator, a manufacturer . . . and these diverse civilizations
succeeded each other at intervals of time that the mind cannot
conceive.”
He took out his watch.
Caroline asked if it was already time to go back to the office.
He said it was not, that it was scarcely half-past twelve.
A little girl was making mud pies at the foot of their bench; a little
boy of seven or eight years was playing in front of them. Whilst his
mother was sewing on an adjoining bench, he played all alone at being a
run-away horse, and with that power of illusion, of which children are
capable, he imagined that he was at the same time the horse, and those
who ran after him, and those who fled in terror before him. He kept
struggling with himself and shouting: “Stop him, Hi! Hi! This is an
awful horse, he has got the bit between his teeth.”
Caroline asked the question:
“Do you think that men were happy formerly?”
Her companion answered:
“They suffered less when they were younger. They acted like that little
boy: they played; they played at arts, at virtues, at vices, at
heroism, at beliefs, at pleasures; they had illusions which entertained
them; they made a noise; they amused themselves. But now. . . .”
He interrupted himself, and looked again at his watch.
The child, who was running, struck his foot against the little girl’s
pail, and fell his full length on the gravel. He remained a moment
stretched out motionless, then raised himself up on the palms of his
hands. His forehead puckered, his mouth opened, and he burst into
tears. His mother ran up, but Caroline had lifted him from the ground
and was wiping his eyes and mouth with her handkerchief.
The child kept on sobbing and Clair took him in his arms.
“Come, don’t cry, my little man! I am going to tell you a story.
“A fisherman once threw his net into the sea and drew out a little,
sealed, copper pot, which he opened with his knife. Smoke came out of
it, and as it mounted up to the clouds the smoke grew thicker and
thicker and became a giant who gave such a terrible yawn that the whole
world was blown to dust....”
Clair stopped himself, gave a dry laugh, and handed the child back to
his mother. Then he took out his watch again, and kneeling on the bench
with his elbows resting on its back he gazed at the town. As far as the
eye could reach, the multitude of houses stood out in their tiny
immensity.
Caroline turned her eyes in the same direction.
“What splendid weather it is!” said she. “The sun’s rays change the
smoke on the horizon into gold. The worst thing about civilization is
that it deprives one of the light of day.”
He did not answer; his looks remained fixed on a place in the town.
After some seconds of silence they saw about half a mile away, in the
richer district on the other side of the river, a sort of tragic fog
rearing itself upwards. A moment afterwards an explosion was heard even
where they were sitting, and an immense tree of smoke mounted towards
the pure sky. Little by little the air was filled with an imperceptible
murmur caused by the shouts of thousands of men. Cries burst forth
quite close to the square.
“What has been blown up?”
The bewilderment was great, for although accidents were common, such a
violent explosion as this one had never been seen, and everybody
perceived that something terribly strange had happened.
Attempts were made to locate the place of the accident; districts,
streets, different buildings, clubs, theatres, and shops were
mentioned. Information gradually became more precise and at last the
truth was known.
“The Steel Trust has just been blown up.”
Clair put his watch back into his pocket.
Caroline looked at him closely and her eyes filled with astonishment.
At last she whispered in his ear:
“Did you know it? Were you expecting it? Was it you . . .”
He answered very calmly:
“That town ought to be destroyed.”
She replied in a gentle and thoughtful tone:
“I think so too.”
And both of them returned quietly to their work.
§. 3
From that day onward, anarchist attempts followed one another every
week without interruption. The victims were numerous, and almost all of
them belonged to the poorer classes. These crimes roused public
resentment. It was among domestic servants, hotel-keepers, and the
employees of such small shops as the Trusts still allowed to exist,
that indignation burst forth most vehemently. In popular districts
women might be heard demanding unusual punishments for the dynamitards.
(They were called by this old name, although it was hardly appropriate
to them, since, to these unknown chemists, dynamite was an innocent
material only fit to destroy ant-hills, and they considered it mere
child’s play to explode nitro-glycerine with a cartridge made of
fulminate of mercury.) Business ceased suddenly, and those who were
least rich were the first to feel the effects. They spoke of doing
justice themselves to the anarchists. In the mean time the factory
workers remained hostile or indifferent to violent action. They were
threatened, as a result of the decline of business, with a likelihood
of losing their work, or even a lock-out in all the factories. The
Federation of Trade Unions proposed a general strike as the most
powerful means of influencing the employers, and the best aid that
could be given to the revolutionists, but all the trades with the
exception of the gilders refused to cease work.
The police made numerous arrests. Troops summoned from all parts of the
National Federation protected the offices of the Trusts, the houses of
the multi-millionaires, the public halls, the banks, and the big shops.
A fortnight passed without a single explosion, and it was concluded
that the dynamitards, in all probability but a handful of persons,
perhaps even still fewer, had all been killed or captured, or that they
were in hiding, or had taken flight. Confidence returned; it returned
at first among the poorer classes. Two or three hundred thousand
soldiers, who bad been lodged in the most closely populated districts,
stimulated trade, and people began to cry out: “Hurrah for the army!”
The rich, who had not been so quick to take alarm, were reassured more
slowly. But at the Stock Exchange a group of “bulls” spread optimistic
rumours and by a powerful effort put a brake upon the fall in prices.
Business improved. Newspapers with big circulations supported the
movement. With patriotic eloquence they depicted capital as laughing in
its impregnable position at the assaults of a few dastardly criminals,
and public wealth maintaining its serene ascendency in spite of the
vain threats made against it. They were sincere in their attitude,
though at the same time they found it benefited them. Outrages were
forgotten or their occurrence denied. On Sundays, at the race-meetings,
the stands were adorned by women covered with pearls and diamonds. It
was observed with joy that the capitalists had not suffered. Cheers
were given for the multi-millionaires in the saddling rooms.
On the following day the Southern Railway Station, the Petroleum Trust,
and the huge church built at the expense of Thomas Morcellet were all
blown up. Thirty houses were in flames, and the beginning of a fire was
discovered at the docks. The firemen showed amazing intrepidity and
zeal. They managed their tall fire-escapes with automatic precision,
and climbed as high as thirty storeys to rescue the luckless
inhabitants from the flames. The soldiers performed their duties with
spirit, and were given a double ration of coffee. But these fresh
casualties started a panic. Millions of people, who wanted to take
their money with them and leave the town at once, crowded the great
banking houses. These establishments, after paying out money for three
days, closed their doors amid mutterings of a riot. A crowd of
fugitives, laden with their baggage, besieged the railway stations and
took the town by storm. Many who were anxious to lay in a stock of
provisions and take refuge in the cellars, attacked the grocery stores,
although they were guarded by soldiers with fixed bayonets. The public
authorities displayed energy. Numerous arrests were made and thousands
of warrants issued against suspected persons.
During the three weeks that followed no outrage was committed. There
was a rumour that bombs had been found in the Opera House, in the
cellars of the Town Hall, and beside one of the Pillars of the Stock
Exchange. But it was soon known that these were boxes of sweets that
had been put in those places by practical jokers or lunatics. One of
the accused, when questioned by a magistrate, declared that he was the
chief author of the explosions, and said that all his accomplices had
lost their lives. These confessions were published by the newspapers
and helped to reassure public opinion. It was only towards the close of
the examination that the magistrates saw they had to deal with a
pretender who was in no way connected with any of the crimes.
The experts chosen by the courts discovered nothing that enabled them
to determine the engine employed in the work of destruction. According
to their conjectures the new explosive emanated from a gas which radium
evolves, and it was supposed that electric waves, produced by a special
type of oscillator, were propagated through space and thus caused the
explosion. But even the ablest chemist could say nothing precise or
certain. At last two policemen, who were passing in front of the Hôtel
Meyer, found on the pavement, close to a ventilator, an egg made of
white metal and provided with a capsule at each end. They picked it up
carefully, and, on the orders of their chief, carried it to the
municipal laboratory. Scarcely had the experts assembled to examine it,
than the egg burst and blew up the amphitheatre and the dome. All the
experts perished, and with them Collin, the General of Artillery, and
the famous Professor Tigre.
The capitalist society did not allow itself to be daunted by this fresh
disaster. The great banks re-opened their doors, declaring that they
would meet demands partly in bullion and partly in paper money
guaranteed by the State. The Stock Exchange and the Trade Exchange, in
spite of the complete cessation of business, decided not to suspend
their sittings.
In the mean time the magisterial investigation into the case of those
who had been first accused had come to an end. Perhaps the evidence
brought against them might have appeared insufficient under other
circumstances, but the zeal both of the magistrates and the public made
up for this insufficiency. On the eve of the day fixed for the trial
the Courts of justice were blown up and eight hundred people were
killed, the greater number of them being judges and lawyers. A furious
crowd broke into the prison and lynched the prisoners. The troops sent
to restore order were received with showers of stones and revolver
shots; several soldiers being dragged from their horses and trampled
underfoot. The soldiers fired on the mob and many persons were killed.
At last the public authorities succeeded in establishing tranquillity.
Next day the Bank was blown up.
From that time onwards unheard-of things took place. The factory
workers, who had refused to strike, rushed in crowds into the town and
set fire to the houses. Entire regiments, led by their officers, joined
the workmen, went with them through the town singing revolutionary
hymns, and took barrels of petroleum from the docks with which to feed
the fires. Explosions were continual. One morning a monstrous tree of
smoke, like the ghost of a huge palm tree half a mile in height, rose
above the giant Telegraph Hall which suddenly fell into a complete
ruin.
Whilst half the town was in flames, the other half pursued its
accustomed life. In the mornings, milk pails could be heard jingling in
the dairy carts. In a deserted avenue some old navvy might be seen
seated against a wall slowly eating hunks of bread with perhaps a
little meat. Almost all the presidents of the trusts remained at their
posts. Some of them performed their duty with heroic simplicity.
Raphael Box, the son of a martyred multi-millionaire, was blown up as
he was presiding at the general meeting of the Sugar Trust. He was
given a magnificent funeral and the procession on its way to the
cemetery had to climb six times over piles of ruins or cross upon
planks over the uprooted roads.
The ordinary helpers of the rich, the clerks, employees, brokers, and
agents, preserved an unshaken fidelity. The surviving clerks of the
Bank that had been blown up, made their way along the ruined streets
through the midst of smoking houses to hand in their bills of exchange,
and several were swallowed up in the flames while endeavouring to
present their receipts.
Nevertheless, any illusion concerning the state of affairs was
impossible. The enemy was master of the town. Instead of silence the
noise of explosions was now continuous and produced an insurmountable
feeling of horror. The lighting apparatus having been destroyed, the
city was plunged in darkness all through the night, and appalling
crimes were committed. The populous districts alone, having suffered
the least, still preserved measures of protection. The were paraded by
patrols of volunteers who shot the robbers, and at every street corner
one stumbled over a body lying in a pool of blood, the hands bound
behind the back, a handkerchief over the face, and a placard pinned
upon the breast.
It became impossible to clear away the ruins or to bury the dead. Soon
the stench from the corpses became intolerable. Epidemics raged and
caused innumerable deaths, while they also rendered the survivors
feeble and listless. Famine carried off almost all who were left. A
hundred and one days after the first outrage, whilst six army corps
with field artillery and siege artillery were marching, at night, into
the poorest quarter of the city, Caroline and Clair, holding each
other’s hands, were watching from the roof a lofty house, the only one
still left standing, but now surrounded by smoke and flame, joyous
songs ascended from the street, where the crowd was dancing in
delirium.
“To-morrow it will be ended,” said the man, “and it will be better.”
The young woman, her hair loosened and her face shining with the
reflection of the flames, gazed with a pious joy at the circle of fire
that was growing closer around them.
“It will be better,” said she also.
And throwing herself into the destroyer’s arms she pressed a passionate
kiss upon his lips.
§. 4
The other towns of the federation also suffered from disturbances and
outbreaks, and then order was restored. Reforms were introduced into
institutions and great changes took place in habits and customs, but
the country never recovered the loss of its capital, and never regained
its former prosperity. Commerce and industry dwindled away, and
civilization abandoned those countries which for so long it had
preferred to all others. They became insalubrious and sterile; the
territory that had supported so many millions of men became nothing
more than a desert. On the hill of Fort St. Michel wild horses cropped
the coarse grass.
Days flowed by like water from the fountains, and the centuries passed
like drops falling from the ends of stalactites. Hunters came to chase
the bears upon the hills that covered the forgotten city; shepherds led
their flocks upon them; labourers turned up the soil with their
ploughs; gardeners cultivated their lettuces and grafted their pear
trees. They were not rich, and they had no arts. The walls of their
cabins were covered with old vines and roses. A goat-skin clothed their
tanned limbs, while their wives dressed themselves with the wool that
they themselves had spun. The goat-herds moulded little figures of men
and animals out of clay, or sang songs about the young girl who follows
her lover through woods or among the browsing goats while the pine
trees whisper together and the water utters its murmuring sound. The
master of the house grew angry with the beetles who devoured his figs;
he planned snares to protect his fowls from the velvet-tailed fox, and
he poured out wine for his neighbours saying:
“Drink! The flies have not spoilt my vintage; the vines were dry before
they came.”
Then in the course of ages the wealth of the villages and the corn that
filled the fields were pillaged by barbarian invaders. The country
changed its masters several times. The conquerors built castles upon
the hills; cultivation increased; mills, forges, tanneries, and looms
were established; roads were opened through the woods and over the
marshes; the river was covered with boats. The hamlets became large
villages and joining together formed a town which protected itself by
deep trenches and lofty walls. Later, becoming the capital of a great
State, it found itself straitened within its now useless ramparts and
it converted them into grass-covered walks.
It grew very rich and large beyond measure. The houses were never high
enough to satisfy the people; they kept on making them still higher and
built them of thirty or forty storeys, with offices, shops, banks,
societies one above another; they dug cellars and tunnels ever deeper
downwards. Fifteen millions of men laboured in the giant town.