BOOK III

I

The blow was a terrible one at La Guerdache. Ruin suddenly fell upon that residence of luxury and pleasure, which had continually resounded with festivities. A hunt had to be countermanded, and it was necessary to stop the grand Tuesday dinners. The numerous domestics would have to be discharged _en masse_, and there was already some talk of the sale of the carriages, horses, and kennels. All the noisy life of the gardens and park, the endless affluence of visitors, had ceased. In the huge house itself the drawing-rooms, dining-room, billiard-room, and smoking-room became so many deserts, quivering with the blast of disaster. It was a stricken dwelling agonising in the sudden solitude born of misfortune.

To and fro through that infinite sadness went Boisgelin like a woeful shadow. Utterly overcome, with his mind almost unhinged, he spent the most frightful days, at a loss what to do with himself, wandering about like a soul in distress amidst the downfall of his life of enjoyment. He was at bottom a sorry being, a horseman and clubman, an amiable mediocrity whose fine presence and correct, proud mien--the mien of the fool who wears a single eyeglass--collapsed entirely at the first tragic gust of truth and justice. He had hitherto taken his pleasures like one convinced that they were due to him; he had never done the slightest work in his life; he imagined himself to be different from others--a privileged being, one of the elect, born to be fed and amused by the labour of others--and so how could he have understood the catastrophe which had so logically fallen upon him? His egotistical creed had received too severe a shock, and he remained in dismay before the future, respecting which he had not previously felt any disquietude. In the depths of his bewilderment there was particularly the terror of the idler, the kept-man, one who was utterly upset by the thought that he was incapable of earning his living. As Delaveau was gone, from whom could he now demand the profits which had been promised him on the day when he had invested his capital in the Abyss? The works were burnt, the capital had vanished in the ruins, and where would he now find the money to live? He roamed like a madman through the deserted gardens and the lugubrious house without finding an answer to that question.

At first, on the evening following the tragedy, Boisgelin was haunted by thoughts of the frightful death of Delaveau and Fernande. He could have no doubt on the matter, for he remembered in what a mood the young woman had left him--full of wrath and pouring forth threats against her husband. It was certainly Delaveau who, after some terrible scene, had set fire to the house in order to destroy both the guilty woman and himself. In that vengeance, for a mere enjoyer of life like Boisgelin, there was a sombre ferocity, a monstrous violence, which inspired him with unending fright. But the greatest blow was to understand that he was deficient in strength of intellect, and that he lacked the necessary energy to set his affairs in order. From morning till evening he ruminated over various plans without knowing which to adopt. Would it be best to try to resuscitate the works, seek money and an engineer, endeavour to establish a company to carry on the business? He feared that he might not succeed in such attempts, for the losses were very great, and must in the first instance be made good. Ought he not rather to wait for a purchaser who would take the land, and such plant and materials as had been saved, at his risk and peril? But Boisgelin greatly doubted whether such a purchaser would ever turn up, and in particular he doubted whether he would obtain from him a sufficiently large sum to liquidate the situation. Moreover, the question of his future life still remained to be settled; for the estate of La Guerdache was an expensive one to keep up, and perhaps at the end of the month he would no longer have enough money to buy even bread.

In this emergency one sole creature took pity on the wretched, trembling, forsaken man, who roamed about his empty house like a lost child, and this was Suzanne, his wife, that woman full of heroic gentleness whom he had so cruelly outraged. At the outset, when he had imposed his _liaison_ with Fernande upon her, she had again and again resolved upon asserting herself and driving the intruder, the strange woman, from her house; but in the end she had invariably refrained from taking that course, for she felt certain that if she were to drive Fernande away, her infatuated husband would follow her. Then, their relative positions being settled, Suzanne had taken a room for herself and had become a wife in name only, keeping up appearances in the presence of visitors, but devoting herself entirely to the education of Paul, whom she wished to save from disaster. Had it not been for that dear child, fair and gentle like herself, she would never have become, resigned to the position. It was he who had brought about her renunciation, her sacrifice. She had removed him as much as possible from the influence of his unworthy father, anxious that his mind and heart, in which by way of consolation she hoped to cultivate sense and kindliness, should belong to herself alone. In this wise years went by, amidst the delight of seeing him grow up reasonable and affectionate; and it was only from a distance, so to say, that Suzanne had beheld the slow ruin of the Abyss and the growing prosperity of La Crêcherie. Like her husband, she had no doubt whatever that Delaveau, informed of the truth, had personally fired that huge pyre in order to destroy himself with that corrupting, devouring creature, his guilty wife. Suzanne shuddered as she thought of it, and asked herself if she had not in some small degree contributed to the catastrophe by her own resignation, her weakness, in tolerating betrayal and shame in her own home during so many years. If she had only rebelled at the outset, perhaps the crime would never have reached that climax. And her qualms of conscience quite upset her, and moved her to compassion for the wretched man whom, since the days of the catastrophe, she had seen roaming about like one demented, through the deserted garden and the empty house.

One morning, as she herself was crossing the grand drawing-room where Boisgelin had given so many _fêtes_, she perceived him there huddled up on an arm-chair, and sobbing and weeping like a child. She was quite stirred, filled with pity at the sight. And she, who for many years had never spoken to him unless it were necessary to do so in the presence of guests, drew near and said, 'It is not in despairing that you will find the strength you need.'

Amazed at seeing her there, at hearing her speak to him, he looked at her through the tears which blurred his eyes.

'Yes,' she continued, 'it is of no use roaming about from morning till night--you must find courage in yourself, you will not find it elsewhere.'

He made a gesture expressive of desolation, and answered in a faint voice: 'I am so much alone.'

He was not by nature an evilly disposed man; he was simply a fool and a weakling, one of those cowards whom egotistical pleasure turns into brutes. And it was with such utter dejection that he complained of the solitude in which she left him amidst his misfortune, that she again felt very touched.

'You mean,' she said, 'that you wished to be alone. Since those frightful occurrences why have you not come to me?'

'Good God!' he stammered, 'can you forgive me?'

Then he caught hold of her hands, which she left in his grasp, and, overwhelmed and wildly repentant, confessed his fault. He acknowledged nothing but what she knew already, his long betrayal, the mistress whom he had brought into his home, that woman who had maddened him and urged him on to ruin; but in accusing himself he displayed such passionate frankness that Suzanne was touched as by some spontaneous confession which he might have spared himself.

'It is true,' he ended by saying, 'I have wronged you so long, I have behaved abominably. Ah! why did you abandon me, why did you try nothing to win me back?'

His words awoke in her those qualms of conscience, the covert remorse which she felt at the thought that she had perhaps not done all her duty, that she had erred in not trying to stop him on his downward course. And the reconciliation which pity had initiated was completed by a feeling of indulgence. Are not the most pure, the most heroic partially responsible at times, when the weak and the erring succumb around them?

'Yes,' she said, 'I ought to have battled more, but I was too intent on sparing my pride and procuring quietude. We both have need of forgetfulness, we must regard all the past as dead.'

Then, as their son Paul happened to pass through the garden under the windows, she called him indoors. He was now a big fellow of eighteen, intelligent and refined, a son after her own image, very affectionate and very sensible, free from all caste prejudices, and ready to live on the fruit of his own exertions whenever circumstances might require it. He had begun to take a passionate interest in the land, and spent whole days at the farm, busy with questions of culture, the germination of seed and harvesting of crops. As it happened, when his mother asked him to come in for a moment, he was about to repair to Feuillat's to see a new type of plough.

'Come in, my boy, your father is in great grief, and I wish you to kiss him,' said Suzanne.

There had been a rupture between father and son as between husband and wife. Won over entirely to his mother's side, Paul, in growing up, had felt nothing but cold respect for his father, whose conduct, he divined, must be the cause of his mother's frequent sorrow. Thus he now came into the drawing-room, feeling both surprised and moved, and for a few seconds remained gazing at his parents, whom he found so pale, so upset by emotion. Then, understanding the position, he kissed his father very affectionately, and flung his arms around his mother's neck, anxious to embrace her also with all his heart. The family bond was formed once more, and there came a happy moment, when one might have believed that agreement would henceforth be complete between them.

When Suzanne in her turn had kissed her son, Boisgelin had to restrain a fresh flow of tears. 'Good, good! now we all agree. Ah! that gives me some courage again. We are in such a terrible position! We shall have to come to some arrangement, take some decision.'

They went on talking for a little while, all three of them seated there together; for Boisgelin felt a desire to unburden himself and confide in that woman and that lad after roaming about alone so distressfully. He reminded Suzanne how they had bought the Abyss for a million, and La Guerdache for five hundred thousand francs, out of the two millions which had remained to them, the one which had formed her dowry, and the other which had been saved in the wreck of his own fortune. The five hundred thousand francs left out of the two millions had been handed to Delaveau, and had served as working capital for the Abyss. All their money was thus invested in that enterprise, but unfortunately during recent financial embarrassments it had been necessary to borrow six hundred thousand francs, a debt which had weighed heavily upon the business. It really seemed as if the works were quite dead since they were burnt, and besides, before erecting them afresh it would be necessary to pay the debt of six hundred thousand francs.

'Then what do you intend to do?' Suzanne inquired.

Boisgelin thereupon explained the two solutions between which he hesitated, unable to adopt either, so great were the difficulties which attended both. On the one hand they might rid themselves of everything, sell what remained of the Abyss for what it would fetch--that is, no doubt, barely enough to pay the outstanding debt of six hundred thousand francs; or, on the other hand, they might try to find fresh funds, and establish a company, to which he would belong by contributing the land and the plant that had been saved. But here again there seemed little hope of effecting such a combination. Meantime, a solution was every day becoming more necessary, for their ruin was growing more and more complete.

'We also have La Guerdache--we can sell it,' remarked Suzanne.

'Oh! sell La Guerdache!' he answered in a despairing way. 'Part with this property to which we are so accustomed, so attached! And all to go and hide ourselves in some wretched hovel! What a downfall it would be, what a lot more grief it would bring!'

Suzanne became grave again, for she well perceived that he was not resigned to the idea of leading a reasonable modest life. 'We shall inevitably have to come to it, my friend,' said she. 'We cannot continue living upon such a footing.'

'No doubt, no doubt, we shall sell La Guerdache, but later on, when an opportunity presents itself. If we were to put it up for sale now we should not obtain half its value, for in doing so we should confess our ruin, and the whole district would league itself against us to rejoice and speculate on our misfortunes.' Then he added more direct arguments: 'Besides, my dear, La Guerdache belongs to you. As is stated in the deeds, the five hundred thousand francs of the purchase money were taken from your dowry, the remaining five hundred thousand francs of which formed half of the million which the Abyss cost us. Whilst we are co-proprietors of the works, La Guerdache is entirely your own property, and I simply desire to keep it for you as long as possible.'

Suzanne did not wish to insist on the subject, but she made a gesture as if to say that she had long since resigned herself to every sacrifice. Her husband was looking at her, and all at once he seemed to remember something.

'Oh, by the way,' he exclaimed, 'I've a question to ask you. Have you ever seen your old friend, Monsieur Luc Froment, again?'

She remained for a moment stupefied. Following upon the foundation of La Crêcherie and the acute rivalry which had ensued between that enterprise and the Abyss, had come a rupture with Luc, a rupture which had not been the slightest of her sorrows amongst her many bitter experiences. She felt that she had lost in Luc a cordial, consoling, brotherly friend who would have helped and sustained her. But once again she had resigned herself, and whenever she had chanced to meet him at long intervals, on one of the few occasions when she went out, she had never spoken to him. He imitated her discretion and renunciation, and it seemed as if their old intimacy were quite dead. Still this did not prevent Suzanne from taking quite a passionate interest in Luc's enterprise, an interest of which she spoke to nobody. In secret she remained upon his side in the generous efforts which he was making to set a little more justice and love upon the earth. Thus she had suffered with him and triumphed with him, and when at one moment she had imagined him to be dead, killed by Ragu's knife-thrust, she had for forty-eight hours shut herself up alone, far away from everybody.

In the depths of her grief she had then discovered an intolerable anguish; that _liaison_ with Josine which Ragu's crime had revealed to her left a torturing wound in her heart. Had she then been in love with Luc without knowing it? Perhaps so, for had she not dreamt of the joy, the pride that she would have felt at having such a husband as he, one who would have turned fortune to such good and magnificent use? Had she not thought, too, that she would have helped him, and that between them they would have accomplished prodigies in the cause of peace and kindness? But he grew well again, and was now the husband of Josine; and Suzanne felt everything crumbling once more, leaving her nought but the abnegation of a sacrificed wife, of a mother who only continued living for her son's sake. From that moment Luc ceased to exist for her, and the question which her husband had now put revived what seemed to be such a distant past that she was unable to hide her surprise.

'How can I have seen Monsieur Froment again?' she at last answered. 'You know that for more than ten years all intercourse between us has been broken off.'

But Boisgelin quietly shrugged his shoulders. 'Oh! that doesn't prevent it; you might have met him and have spoken to him. You agreed so well together formerly. So you have kept up no relations with him at all?'

'No,' she answered, somewhat sharply. 'If I had, you would know it.'

Her astonishment was increasing; she felt hurt by her husband's insistence; ashamed, too, at being questioned in that manner. What could be his object? why did he wish that she had kept up relations with Luc? In her turn she felt inquisitive, and inquired: 'Why do you ask me that?'

'Oh! for nothing--only an idea which occurred to me just now.'

Finally, he reverted to the subject, and revealed what he had on his mind. 'This is it. I was telling you a little while ago that we could adopt one of two courses; either sell the Abyss, rid ourselves of everything, or start a company to which I should belong. Well, there's also a third course, a combination, as it were, of both the others, and that would be to sell the Abyss to La Crêcherie, but in such a way as to reserve to ourselves the larger part of the profits. Do you understand?'

'No, not exactly.'

'But it is very simple. That fellow Luc must have a great desire to acquire our land. Well, he has done us enough harm; is that not so? And it is quite legitimate that we should get a large sum out of him. And our salvation certainly lies in that direction, particularly if we acquire an interest in the business which would enable us to keep La Guerdache without need of retrenchment in our manner of life.'

Suzanne listened with sorrow and dismay. What! he was still the same man as formerly; that frightful lesson had not corrected him! He only dreamt of speculating on others, of deriving profit from the situation in which they found themselves. And in particular he still had one sole object, that of doing nothing, of remaining an idler, a kept-man, otherwise a capitalist. In the wild despair amidst which he had been struggling since the catastrophe there had been but terror, hatred of work, and one haunting thought: how could he so arrange matters that he might continue to live, doing nothing? His tears were already dry, and now, all at once, he reappeared such as he really was--a man intent on enjoyment.

However, Suzanne wished to know everything.

'But what have I to do with this matter?' she inquired; 'why did you ask me if I had kept up any relations with Monsieur Froment?'

'Oh, _mon Dieu!_' he quietly replied; 'because that would have facilitated the overtures which I think of making to him. As you can understand, after years of rupture, it is not easy to approach a man to discuss questions of interest, whereas things would be much easier if he had remained your friend. In that case you yourself, perhaps, might have seen him, spoken to him----'

With a sudden wave of her hand Suzanne stopped her husband: 'I would never have spoken to Monsieur Froment under such circumstances. You forget that I had a sisterly affection for him.'

Ah, the wretched being! So now he had sunk to so low a degree of baseness that he was ready to speculate on such affection as Luc might have retained for her, and it was she whom he thought of employing to touch his adversary, in such wise that the latter might then be more easily conquered.

Boisgelin must have understood that he had hurt Suzanne's feelings, for he could see that she had become much paler and colder, as if she had again withdrawn from him. He wished to efface that bad impression. 'You are right,' said he, 'business is not a thing for women to attend to. As you say, also, you could not have undertaken such a commission. But all the same I am well pleased with my idea, for the more I think it over, the more convinced I feel that our salvation lies in it. I shall prepare my plan of attack, and find a means of opening up intercourse with the director of La Crêcherie--unless, indeed, I allow him to take the first steps, which would be a more skilful course.'

He was quite enlivened by the hope of duping another and deriving sustenance and pleasure from him as he had hitherto done. There would still be something good in life if one could live it with white and idle hands, ignorant of work. He rose, gave a sigh of relief, and looked on the great park. It seemed more extensive still on that clear winter day, and he hoped to give fêtes in it again as soon as the spring should come. Finally he exclaimed: 'It would really be too stupid for us to distress ourselves. Can folk like ourselves ever become paupers?'

Suzanne, who had remained seated, felt her painful sadness increase. For a moment she had entertained the naïve hope of reforming that man, and now she perceived that every tempest and revolution might pass over him without bringing amendment, or even understanding of the new times. The ancient system of the exploitation of man by man was in his blood, he could only live on others. He would always remain a big bad child who would fall to her charge later on should justice ever do its work. And thus she could only regard him with great and bitter pity.

Throughout that long conversation Paul had remained motionless, listening to his parents with his usual gentle, intelligent, and loving expression. All the feelings which in turn agitated his mother were reflected in his large pensive eyes. He was in constant communion with her, and suffered like herself at seeing how unworthy his father was. She at last perceived his painful embarrassment, and asked him: 'Where were you going just now, my child?'

'I was going to the farm, mother; Feuillat must have received the new plough for the winter ploughing.'

Boisgelin laughed: 'And that interests you?' he asked.

'Why yes, father. At Les Combettes they have steam ploughs which turn up furrows several thousand yards long now that all the fields have been joined together; and it is superb to see the land turned up like that and fertilised.'

He was overflowing with youthful enthusiasm. His mother, who felt touched by it, smiled at him. 'Go, go, my boy,' she said, 'go and see the new plough, and work--your health will be all the better for it.'

During the ensuing days Suzanne noticed that her husband evinced no haste in putting his project into execution. It seemed as if he deemed it sufficient to have discovered a solution which in his opinion would save them all. That done he relapsed into indolence, incapable of any effort. However, there was another big child at La Guerdache, whose manner suddenly caused Suzanne considerable disquietude. Monsieur Jérôme, her grandfather, who had just reached the advanced age of eighty-eight, in spite of the species of living death to which paralysis had reduced him, still led a silent and retired existence, having no intercourse with the outer world apart from his frequent promenades in the bath-chair which a servant propelled. Suzanne alone entered his room and ministered to his wants, evincing the same loving attention as she had already shown when a mere girl, thirty years previously, in that same large ground-floor room looking towards the park. She was so accustomed to the old man's clear, fathomless eyes, which seemed, as it were, full of spring water, that she was able to detect the slightest shadow that passed over them. Now, since the recent tragical events, those eyes had darkened somewhat after the fashion of water when rising sand renders it turbid. For many monotonous years Suzanne had seen nothing in them, and finding them so limpid and so empty had imagined that power of thought had for ever departed from her grandfather. But was it now returning? Did not those shadows in Monsieur Jérôme's eyes, and his feverishness of manner, indicate a possible awakening? Perhaps, indeed, he had always retained his consciousness and intelligence; perhaps, too, by some kind of miracle, now when he was drawing nigh to death, the hard physical bond of paralysis was relaxing in some slight measure, releasing him from the silence and immobility in which he had so long lived imprisoned. It was with growing astonishment and anguish that Suzanne watched that slow work of deliverance.

One night the servant who propelled Monsieur Jérôme's bath-chair ventured to stop her just as she was coming from the old man's room, quite stirred by the living glance with which he had watched her depart. 'Madame,' said the servant, 'I made up my mind to tell you. It seems to me that there is a change in Monsieur. To-day he spoke.'

'What! he spoke?' she answered, thunderstruck.

'Yes, even yesterday I fancied that I could hear him stammering words in an undertone when we halted for a little while on the Brias road in front of the Abyss. But to-day, when we passed before La Crêcherie, he certainly spoke, I'm sure of it.'

'And what did he say?'

'Ah, madame, I did not understand, his words were disconnected, one couldn't make sense of them.'

From that moment Suzanne, full of anxious solicitude, had a close watch kept upon her grandfather. The servant received orders to report to her every evening what had happened during the day. In this wise she was able to follow the growing fever which seemed to have come upon Monsieur Jérôme. He was possessed by a desire to see and hear, he made it plain by signs that he wished to have his outings prolonged, as if he were eager for the sights which he found upon the roads. But he particularly insisted on being taken each day to the same spots, either the Abyss or La Crêcherie, and he never wearied of contemplating the former's sombre ruins and the latter's gay prosperity. He compelled his servant to slacken his pace, made him go past the same spot several times, and all the while he more and more distinctly stammered those disjointed words, whose sense was not yet apparent. Suzanne, quite upset by this awakening, at last sent for Doctor Novarre, whoso opinion she was anxious to ascertain.

'Doctor,' said she, after explaining the case to him, 'you cannot conceive how it frightens me. It is as if I were witnessing a resurrection. My heart contracts, it all appears to me like some prodigious sign announcing extraordinary events.'

Novarre smiled at her nervousness, and wished to see things himself. But it was not easy to deal with Monsieur Jérôme; he had closed his door to doctors as well as to others; and besides, as his ailment admitted of no treatment, Novarre had for years abstained from making any attempt to enter his room. In the present instance the doctor had to wait for the old man in the park, where he bowed to him as he passed in his bath-chair. Next he followed him along the road, and on drawing near saw that his eyes began to gleam whilst his lips parted, and a vague stammering came from them. In his turn Novarre felt astonished and stirred.

'You were quite right, Madame,' he came to tell Suzanne, 'the case is a very singular one. We are evidently in presence of some crisis affecting the whole organism, and arising from some great internal shock.'

'But what do you expect will happen, doctor?' Suzanne anxiously inquired, 'and what can we do?'

'Oh, we can do nothing, that is unfortunately certain, and as for foreseeing what such a condition may lead to, I won't attempt it. Yet I ought to tell you that if such cases are very rare they do occasionally occur. Thus I remember examining at the asylum of Saint-Cron an old man who had been shut up there for nearly forty years, and whom the keepers, to the best of their remembrance, had never once heard speak. Quite suddenly, however, he appeared to awake, at first speaking in a confused manner, and then very plainly, whereupon an interminable flow of speech set in--whole hours of ceaseless chatter. But the extraordinary part of it was that this old man, who was regarded as an idiot, had seen, heard, and understood everything during his forty years of apparent slumber. And when he recovered the power of speech it was an endless narrative of his sensations and recollections stored within him since his entry into the asylum that poured from his lips.'

Although Suzanne strove to hide the frightful emotion into which this example threw her, she could not help shuddering. 'And what became of that unhappy man?' she asked.

Novarre hesitated for a second, then replied: 'He died three days afterwards. I must own it, madame, a crisis of that sort is almost always a symptom of approaching dissolution. One finds in it the eternal symbol of the lamp which throws up a last flame before going out.'

Deep silence reigned. Suzanne had become very pale. The icy breath of death swept by. But it was not so much the thought that her unhappy grandfather would soon die that pained her--she had another poignant fear. Had he seen, heard, and understood everything throughout his long paralysis, even after the fashion of the old man of Saint-Cron?

At last she summoned sufficient bravery to ask another question: 'Do you think, doctor,' she inquired, 'that intelligence has quite departed from our dear patient? In your opinion does he understand, does he think?'

Novarre made a vague gesture, the gesture of the scientist who does not consider it right to venture on any pronouncement respecting matters outside the pale of scientific certainty.

'Oh! you ask me too much, madame,' said he. 'Everything is possible in that mystery, the human brain, into which we still penetrate with so much difficulty. Intelligence can certainly remain intact after the loss of speech; because one cannot speak it does not follow that one is unable to think. However, I may say that I should formerly have believed in a permanent weakening of all Monsieur Jérôme's mental faculties, I should have thought him sunk in senile infancy for ever.'

'Still, it is possible that he may have retained his faculties intact.'

'Quite possible; I even begin to suspect that such is the case, as is indicated by that awakening of his whole being, and that return of speech which seems to be coming back to him gradually.'

This conversation left Suzanne in a state of dolorous horror. She could no longer linger in her grandfather's room and witness his slow resurrection without a secret feeling of alarm. If amidst the mute rigidity in which he had been chained by paralysis he had indeed seen, heard, and understood everything, what a terrible drama must have filled his long silence! For more than thirty years he had remained an impassive witness, as it were, of the decline of his race, those clear eyes of his had beheld the rout of his descendants, a downfall accelerated from father to son by the vertigo born of wealth. In the devouring blaze of enjoyment two generations had sufficed to consume the fortune which his father and he had built up, and which he had deemed so firm. He had seen his son Michel ruin himself for worthless women directly he became a widower, and blow his brains out with a pistol-shot; whilst his daughter Laure, losing her head in mysticism, entered a convent; and his second son, Philippe, married to a hussy, perished in a duel after an imbecile career. He had also seen his grandson Gustave impel his father Michel to suicide by robbing him of his mistress and of the hundred thousand francs that he had collected for his business payments; whilst at the same time his other grandson André, Philippe's child, was relegated to a lunatic asylum. He had further seen Boisgelin, the husband of his granddaughter Suzanne, purchase the imperilled Abyss, and confide its management to a poor cousin, Delaveau, who, after restoring it to prosperity for a brief period, had reduced it to ashes on the night when he had discovered the betrayal of his wife Fernande and that coxcomb Boisgelin--the pair of them maddened by such a craving for luxury and pleasure that they had destroyed all around them. And he had seen the Abyss, his well-loved work, so small and modest when he had inherited it from his father, so greatly enlarged by himself, he had seen that Abyss, which he had hoped his race would make a city, the empire as it were of iron and steel, decline so rapidly that with the second generation of his descendants not a stone of it remained standing. Finally, he had seen his race, in which creative power had accumulated so slowly through a long line of wretched toilers, till it had burst forth at last in his father and himself; he had seen his race spoilt, debased, and destroyed by the abuse of wealth, as if nothing of the Qurignons' heroic passion for work glowed among his grandchildren. And thus how frightful must be the story amassed in the brain of that octogenarian, what a procession of terrible occurrences, synthetising a whole century of effort, and casting light on the past, the present, and the future of a family! And what a terrifying thing, too, it was that the brain in which that story had seemed to slumber should at last slowly awaken to life, and that everything should threaten to come forth from it, in a great flood of truth, if indeed the tongue that already stammered should end by speaking plainly!

It was for that terrible awakening that Suzanne now waited with growing anxiety. She and her son were the last of the race; Paul was the sole heir of the Qurignons. Aunt Laure had lately died in the Carmelite convent where she had lived for nearly forty years; and Cousin André, cut off from the world since infancy, had been dead for many years already. Thus nowadays, whenever Paul went with his mother into Monsieur Jérôme's room, the old man's eyes, once more gleaming with intelligence, rested on him for a long while. That lad was the sole frail wattle of the oak from whose powerful trunk he had once hoped to see a number of vigorous branches, a whole swarming family, fork and grow. Was not that family tree full of new sap, health, and vigour, derived from sturdy, toiling forerunners? Would not his line blossom forth and spread around to conquer all the wealth and all the joy of the world? But, behold the sap was already exhausted with the coming of his grandchildren; in less than half a century a misspent life of wealth had consumed the whole strength amassed through a long ancestry! How bitter it was when that unhappy grandfather, the supreme witness surviving amidst so much ruin, found himself confronted by one sole heir, that gentle, delicate, refined Paul, who was like the last gift vouchsafed by life, which perhaps had left him to the Qurignons in order that they might grow afresh and flower in new soil! But what dolorous irony there was in the fact that only that quiet, thoughtful lad remained in that huge, royal residence of La Guerdache which Monsieur Jérôme had originally purchased at such great cost, in the hope of seeing it some day peopled by his numerous descendants. He had pictured its spacious rooms occupied by ten households; he had imagined that he could hear the laughter of an ever-increasing troop of boys and girls; in his imagination the place became the happy, luxurious family estate where the ever-fruitful dynasty of the Qurignons would reign. But, on the contrary, the rooms had grown emptier day by day; drunkenness, madness, and death had swept by, accomplishing their destructive work; and then a final corrupting creature had come to complete the ruin of the house; and since the last catastrophe two-thirds of the rooms were kept closed, the whole of the second floor was abandoned to the dust, and even the ground-floor reception-rooms were only opened on Saturdays in order to admit a little sunshine. The race would end if Paul did not raise it up afresh; the empire in which it should have prospered was already naught but a large empty dwelling which would crumble away in abandonment unless new life were imparted to it.

Another week went by. The servant who attended Monsieur Jérôme could now distinguish certain words amidst his stammering. At last a distinct phrase was detected, and the man came to repeat it to Suzanne.

'Oh! he did not manage it without difficulty, madame, but I assure you that this morning Monsieur repeated: "One must give back, one must give back."'

Suzanne was incredulous. The words seemed to have no meaning. What was to be given back?

'You must listen more attentively,' she said to the servant; 'try to distinguish the words better.'

On the morrow, however, the man was still more positive. 'I assure madame,' said he, 'that Monsieur really says: "One must give back, one must give back." He says it twenty and thirty times in succession in a low but persistent voice, as if putting all his strength into it.'

That same evening Suzanne determined to watch her grandfather herself, in order that she might understand things better. On the following day the old man was unable to get up. Whilst his brain seemed to be freeing itself from its bonds, his legs and soon his trunk were attacked by paralysis, and became quite lifeless. Suzanne was greatly alarmed by this, and again sent for Novarre, who was unable to do anything, and warned her that the end was approaching. From that moment she did not quit the room.

It was a very large room, with very thick carpets and heavy hangings. A deep ruddy hue and a substantial and rather sombre luxury prevailed there. The furniture was of carved rosewood, the bed was a large four-poster, and there was a tall mirror in which the park was reflected. When the windows were open the view, beyond the lawns, between the old trees, stretched over an immense panorama in which one saw first the jumbled roofs of Beauclair, and then the Bleuse Mountains with La Crêcherie and its smeltery, and the Abyss, whose gigantic chimneys still rose erect.

One morning Suzanne sat down near the bed, after drawing back the window curtains, in order to admit the winter sunshine; and all at once she felt greatly moved on hearing Monsieur Jérôme speak. For a few moments his face had been turned towards one of the windows through which he had been looking at the distant horizon. And at first he only uttered two words:

'Monsieur Luc.'

Suzanne, who had distinctly heard them, was quite overcome with surprise. Why Monsieur Luc? Her grandfather had never had any intercourse with Luc, he ought to have been ignorant of his existence, unless indeed he was aware of what had lately occurred, had seen everything, and understood everything, even as hitherto she had only suspected and feared. Indeed, those words 'Monsieur Luc,' falling from his lips which had been sealed so long, were like a first proof that he had retained a lively intelligence amidst his silence, and could see and understand. Suzanne felt her anguish increasing.

'Is it really Monsieur Luc that you say, grandfather?' she asked.

'Yes, yes, Monsieur Luc.'

He pronounced the name with increasing distinctness and energy, keeping his ardent glance fixed upon her.

'But why do you speak to me of Monsieur Luc?' she said. 'Do you know him then? Have you something to say to me about him?'

Monsieur Jérôme hesitated, doubtless because he could not find the words he wished; then with childish impatience he repeated:

'Monsieur Luc!'

'He used to be my best friend,' resumed Suzanne, 'but for long years now he has ceased coming here.'

Monsieur Jérôme quickly nodded his head, and then, as if his tongue were gradually acquiring the power of speech, he said: 'I know, I know--I wish him to come.'

'You wish Monsieur Luc to come to see you--you wish to speak to him, grandfather?'

'Yes, yes, it is that. Let him come at once--I will speak to him.'

The surprise and the vague fright that possessed Suzanne were now increasing. What could Monsieur Jérôme wish to say to Luc? There were such painful possibilities, that for a moment she tried to avoid granting the old man's request, as if indeed she imagined him to be delirious. But he was in full possession of his senses, and entreated her with increasing fervour, all the strength indeed remaining in his poor infirm frame. And at this Suzanne felt profoundly disturbed, asking herself if it would not be wrong of her to refuse the dying man's request for that interview, although she shuddered at the thought of the dimly threatening things which might result from it.

'Cannot you say what you wish to me, grandfather?' she ultimately asked.

'No, no--to Monsieur Luc. I will speak to him at once--oh, at once!'

'Very well, then, grandfather, I will write to him, and I hope that he will come.'

When Suzanne sat down to write, however, her hand trembled. She penned only two lines: 'My friend, I have need of you, come at once.' Nevertheless she was twice compelled to pause, for she lacked strength to trace even those few words, so painful were the memories that they aroused within her--memories of her lost life and of the happiness beside which she had passed, and which she would never know. At last, however, the note was written, and it was scarcely ten in the morning when one of the servants, a lad, set out to take it to La Crêcherie.

Luc, as it happened, was standing outside the common-house, finishing his morning inspection, when the note was handed to him; and without delay he followed the young messenger. But how great was the emotion which he felt on reading those simple yet touching words: 'My friend, I have need of you, come at once.' Events had parted him from Suzanne for twelve long years, yet she wrote to him as if they had met only the previous day--like one, too, who was certain that he would respond to her appeal. She had not doubted his friendship for a moment, and he was touched to tears at finding her ever the same, still full of sisterly affection as in former times. The most frightful tragedies had burst forth around them, every passion had run riot, sweeping away men and things, yet after those years of separation they found themselves hand in hand once more. Whilst walking on quickly, and drawing near to La Guerdache, Luc began to wonder, however, why she had sent for him. He was not ignorant of Boisgelin's desire to speculate on the situation and sell the Abyss for as much money as possible; but he had resolved that he would never buy it. The only acceptable solution of the matter in his opinion was the entry of the Abyss into the association of La Crêcherie, after the fashion of the other smaller factories. For a moment it occurred to him that Boisgelin might have asked his wife to make overtures to him, but he knew her, and felt that she was incapable of playing such a part. It seemed to him that she must be exhausted by some great anxiety, that she must need his help in some tragic circumstance. And so he puzzled his mind no more--she herself would soon tell him what service she required of his affection.

Suzanne was waiting for him in one of the little drawing-rooms, and when Luc entered it she thought she was about to faint, so great became her perturbation. He himself felt upset, and at first neither of them could utter a word. They looked at one another in silence.

'Oh, my friend, my friend!' Suzanne murmured when she was at last able to speak.

Those simple words were fraught with all the emotion she felt at the thought of those last twelve years--their separation, broken only by a few silent chance meetings, the cruel life which she herself had led in her defiled home, and the work which he meantime had accomplished, and which she had watched from afar, enthusiastically. He had become a hero for her, she had worshipped him, and had longed to throw herself at his knees, nurse his wounds, and become his consoling helpmate. But another had stepped between them--Josine, who had caused her so much suffering that now all passionate love seemed dead. Nevertheless, at the sight of Luc standing once more before her all those hidden things rose from the depths of her being, and the intensity of her emotion moistened her eyes and made her hands quiver.

'Oh, my friend, my friend!' she repeated, 'so it was sufficient that I should send for you!'

Luc quivered with a similar sympathy, and he also recalled the past. He knew how unhappily she had lived beneath the horrible insult offered to her, the presence of her husband's mistress in her home. He knew, too, what dignity and heroism she had shown in remaining in that home with head erect, for her son's sake and her own. Thus in spite of separation she had never been absent from his mind and heart--he had pitied her more and more at each fresh trial that fell upon her. He had often wondered how he might help her. It would have greatly delighted him to be able to prove that he had forgotten nothing, that he was still the same good friend as formerly. And this was why he had now hastened to respond to her first summons, full of an anxious affection which made his heart swell and prevented him from speaking.

At last, however, he was able to reply: 'Yes, your friend, one who has never ceased to be so, and who only awaited your summons to hasten here.'

They were at that moment so keenly conscious of the bond that for ever united them like brother and sister, that they embraced and kissed each other on the cheeks, even as friends who fear nought of human folly or suffering, but are certain that they will only impart peacefulness and courage to one another. All the strength and tenderness with which the friendship of man and woman may be instinct bloomed in their smiles.

'If you only knew, my friend,' said Luc, 'how great my fears were when I realised that my competition would end by destroying the Abyss! Was it not you whom I was ruining? And what faith in my work I needed to prevent those thoughts from staying my hand! Great sorrow often came upon me--I believed that you must curse me, that you would never forgive me for being the cause of the worries in which you must be struggling.'

'Curse you, my friend! But I was with you, I prayed for you--your victories were my only joy. And living in a sphere that hated you, it was very sweet for me to have a secret affection, to be able to understand and love you, unknown to everybody.'

'None the less I have ruined you, my friend,' Luc retorted. 'What will become of you now, accustomed as you have been since childhood to a life of luxury?'

'Oh, ruined! That would have come about without you! It was the others who ruined me. And you will see how brave I can be, no matter how delicate you may think me.'

'But Paul, your son?'

'Paul! Why, nothing happier could have befallen him. He will work. You know what wealth has done to my people.'

Then Suzanne at last told Luc why she had sent him such a pressing summons. Monsieur Jérôme, the wondrous awakening of whose intelligence she revealed, wished to speak to him. It was the desire of a dying man, for Doctor Novarre believed in his imminent dissolution. Astonished by these tidings even as she had been, seized too, like herself, with vague alarm at the thought of this resurrection in which he was so strangely desired to intervene, Luc none the less answered that he was entirely at her disposal, and ready to do whatever she might request.

'Have you warned your husband of Monsieur Jérôme's desire and my visit?' he inquired.

Suzanne looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. 'No, I did not think of it--besides, it is useless,' said she; 'for a long time past it has seemed as if my grandfather no longer knew that my husband existed. He does not speak to him, he does not even seem to see him. Moreover, my husband went out shooting early this morning, and he has not yet come home.' Then she added, 'If you will follow me, I will take you to my grandfather at once.'

When they entered Monsieur Jérôme's room, the old man, who was sitting up in the large rosewood bed supported by several pillows, still had his eyes turned towards the window whose curtains had been drawn back. In all probability he had never ceased gazing over the park and the spreading horizon, with the Abyss and La Crêcherie showing yonder, beside the Bleuse Mountains, above the jumbled roofs of Beauclair. It was a scene which seemed to attract him irresistibly, like some symbolism of the past, the present, and the future, which he had had before him during all his long silent years.

'Grandfather,' said Suzanne, 'I have had Monsieur Luc Froment fetched for you. Here he is, he was kind enough to come at once.'

The old man slowly turned his head, and looked at Luc with his large eyes, which had grown it seemed yet larger than formerly, and which were now full of deep light. He said nothing, no word of greeting or thanks came from his lips, and the heavy silence lasted several minutes, whilst he kept his gaze fixed upon that stranger, the founder of La Crêcherie, as if he were anxious to know him thoroughly, to dive indeed into his very soul.

At last Suzanne, who felt slightly embarrassed, resumed, 'You do not know Monsieur Froment, grandfather; but perhaps you may have noticed him when you were out.'

Monsieur Jérôme did not appear to hear his granddaughter, for he still returned no answer. After a moment, however, he once more turned his head and looked round the room. And failing to find what he sought he ended by speaking one word--a name--'Boisgelin.'

This caused Suzanne fresh astonishment as well as anxiety and embarrassment. 'You are asking for my husband, grandfather--do you wish him to come here?' she inquired.

'Yes, yes, Boisgelin.'

'But I am afraid that he has not come home yet. Meantime you ought to tell Monsieur Froment why you wished to see him.'

'No, no, Boisgelin, Boisgelin.'

It was evident that he wished to speak in Boisgelin's presence. Suzanne therefore apologised to Luc and left the room to seek her husband. Meanwhile Luc remained face to face with Monsieur Jérôme, conscious that the latter's bright glance was still and ever fixed upon him. In his turn he then began to scrutinise the old man, and found him looking wondrously handsome in his extreme old age, with his white face and regular features, to which the approach of death seemed to impart an expression of sovereign majesty. The wait was a long one, and not a word was exchanged by those two men, whose eyes dived into one another's. All around them the room with its heavy hangings and massive furniture seemed to be slumbering. Not a sound arose--there was naught but the quiver which came through the walls from the large empty closed rooms, the stories and stories which had been abandoned to dust. And nothing could have been more tragical or solemn than that spell of silent waiting. At last Suzanne returned, bringing with her Boisgelin, who had just come home. He still wore his shooting-jacket, gloves, and gaiters, for she had not allowed him time to change his clothes. And he came in with an anxious, bewildered air, astonished at such an adventure. All that his wife had just rapidly told him of the summoning of Luc, his presence in Monsieur Jérôme's room, the old man's recovery of his intelligence, and the statement that he was awaiting him--Boisgelin--before speaking, all those unforeseen occurrences quite upset Suzanne's husband, who had not been allowed even a few minutes of reflection.

'Well, grandfather,' said Suzanne, 'here is my husband. Speak if you have something to tell us. We are listening.'

But again the old man looked round the room, and once more he asked, 'Paul, where is Paul?'

'Do you want Paul to be here too?'

'Yes, yes, I want him.'

'But the fact is that he must be at the farm. Fully a quarter of an hour will be necessary to fetch him.'

'He must come--I want him, I want him!'

Suzanne yielded, and hastily despatched a servant for her son. And then the waiting began afresh, and proved even more solemn and tragic than before. Luc and Boisgelin had simply bowed to one another, finding nothing to say on meeting after so many years in that room which an august breath already seemed to fill. Nobody spoke, and amidst the quiver of the air one only heard the somewhat heavy respiration of Monsieur Jérôme. Once again his large eyes, full of light, were turned towards the window, towards that horizon symbolical of the labour of manhood, where the past had undergone accomplishment, and where the future would be born. And the minutes went by, slowly, regularly, in that anxious wait for what was to come, the act of sovereign grandeur whose approach could be divined.

Some light footsteps were heard at last, and Paul came in, his face glowing healthily from contact with the open air.

'My boy,' said Suzanne, 'it is your grandfather who has brought us all together here. He wishes you to be present while he speaks.'

On the hitherto rigid lips of Monsieur Jérôme a smile of infinite tenderness had at last appeared. He signed to Paul to approach, and made him sit down as near as possible, on the edge of the bed. It was particularly for him, the last heir of the Qurignons, through whom the race might flower anew and yet yield excellent fruit, that he desired to speak. And on seeing how moved the youth looked, full of grief at the thought of a last farewell, he continued for a moment trying to reassure him with his affectionate glances, like one to whom death was sweet since he was about to bequeath as inheritance to his great-grandson an act of goodness, justice, and pacification.

At last he began to speak, amidst the religious silence of one and all. He had turned his face towards Boisgelin, and at first he merely repeated the words which his servant had for two days past heard him stammering in an undertone, amidst other confused utterances:

'One must give back, one must give back!'

Then, seeing that the others did not appear to understand what he meant, he turned to Paul and repeated with growing energy:

'One must give back, my child, give back!'

Suzanne shuddered, and exchanged a glance with Luc, who also was quivering; whilst Boisgelin, seized with uneasiness and alarm, pretended to detect in all this some rambling on the old man's part. But Suzanne inquired: 'What do you desire to tell us, grandfather--what is it that we must give back?'

Monsieur Jérôme's speech was fast becoming easier and more distinct. 'Everything, my child--the Abyss yonder must be given back; La Guerdache must be given back. One must give back the land of the farm. Everything must be given, because nothing ought to belong to us, because everything ought to belong to all.'

'But explain to us, grandfather--to whom are we to give these things?'

'I tell you, my girl, they must be given back to all. Nothing of what we thought to be our property belongs to us. If that property has poisoned and destroyed us, it is because it belonged to others. For our happiness, and the happiness of all, it must be given back, given back!'

Then came a scene of sovereign beauty, incomparable grandeur. The old man did not always find the words he desired, but his gestures indicated his meaning. Amidst the silence of those who surrounded him, he went on slowly, and in spite of all difficulties succeeded in making himself understood. He had seen everything, heard everything, understood everything, and even as Suzanne had divined with quivering anguish, it was all the past which now came back, all the truth of the terrible past, pouring forth in a flood from that hitherto silent, impassive witness, so long imprisoned within his own body. It seemed as if he had only survived the many disasters, a whole family of happy, then stricken, beings, in order to draw from everything the great lesson. On the day of awakening, before going to his death, he spread out all the torture he had suffered as one who, after believing in the triumphant reign of his race over an empire established by himself, had lived long enough to see both race and empire swept away by the blast of the future. And he told why all this had happened, he judged it, and offered reparation.

At the outset came the first Qurignon, the drawer who with a few mates had founded the Abyss, he being as poor as they were, but probably more skilful and economical. Then came himself, the second Qurignon, the one who had gained a fortune, and piled up millions in the course of a stubborn struggle, in which he had displayed heroic determination, ceaseless and ever-intelligent energy. But if he had accomplished prodigies of activity and creative genius, if he had gained money, thanks to his skill in adapting the conditions of production to those of sale, he knew very well that he was simply the outcome of long generations of toilers from whom he had derived all his strength and triumph. How many peasants perspiring as they tilled the glebe, how many workmen exhausted by the handling of tools had been required for the advent of those two first Qurignons who had conquered fortune! Among those forerunners there had been a keen passion to fight for life, to make money, to rise from one class to another, to pursue all the slow enfranchisement of the poor wretch who bends in servitude over his appointed task. And at last one Qurignon had been strong enough to conquer, to escape from the gaol of poverty, to acquire the long-desired wealth, and become in his turn a rich man, a master! But immediately afterwards, that is in two generations, his descendants collapsed, fell once more into the dolorous struggle for existence, exhausted already as they were by enjoyment, consumed by it as by a flame.

'One must give back, one must give back, one must give back!' repeated Monsieur Jérôme.

There was his son Michel, who after years of excesses had killed himself on the eve of a pay-day; there was his other son Philippe, who, having married a hussy, had been ruined by her, and had lost his life in a foolish duel. There was his daughter Laure, who had died in a convent, her mind weakened by mystical visions. There were his two grandsons, André, a rachitic semi-maniac, who had passed away in an asylum, and Gustave, who had met a tragic death in Italy after impelling his father to suicide by robbing him of his mistress and the money he needed for his business payments. Finally, there was his granddaughter Suzanne, the tender-hearted, sensible, well-loved creature, whose husband after repurchasing the Abyss and La Guerdache had completed the work of destruction. The Abyss was now in ashes, and La Guerdache, where he had hoped to see his race swarming, had become a desert. And whilst his race had been collapsing, carrying off both his father's work and his own, he had seen another work arise, La Crêcherie, which was now full of prosperity, throbbing with the future that it brought with it. He knew all those things because his clear eyes had witnessed them in the course of his daily outings, those hours of silent contemplation, when he had found himself outside the Abyss at the moment when one or another shift was leaving, or outside La Crêcherie where the men who had deserted his own foundation took off their caps to him. And again he had passed before the Abyss on the morning when of that well-loved creation he had found nought but smoking ruins left.

'One must give back, one must give back, one must give back!'

That cry, which he constantly repeated amidst his slowly flowing words, which he emphasised each time with more and more energy, ascended from his heart like the natural consequence of all the disastrous events which had caused him so much suffering. If everything around him had crumbled away so soon, was it not because the fortune which he had acquired by the labour of others was both poisoned and poisonous? The enjoyment that such fortune brings is the most certain of destructive ferments--it bastardises a race, disorganises a family, leads to abominable tragedies. In less than half a century it had consumed the strength, the intelligence, the genius which the Qurignons had amassed during several centuries of rough toil. The mistake of those robust workers had been their belief that to secure personal happiness they ought to appropriate and enjoy the wealth created by the exertions of their companions. And the wealth they had dreamt of, the wealth they had acquired, had proved their chastisement. Nothing can be worse from the moral point of view than to cite as an example the workman who grows rich, who becomes an employer, the sovereign master of thousands of his fellow-men who bend perspiring over their toil, producing the wealth by which he triumphs! When a writer says: 'You see very well that with order and intelligence a mere blacksmith may attain to everything,' he simply contributes to the work of iniquity, and aggravates social disequilibrium. The happiness of the elect is really compounded of the unhappiness of others, for it is their happiness which he cuts down and purloins. The comrade who makes his way, as the saying goes, bars the road to thousands of other comrades, lives upon their misery and their suffering. And it often happens that the happy one is punished by success, by fortune itself, which coming too quickly and disproportionately, proves murderous. This is why the only right course is to revert to salutary work, work on the part of all--all earning their livings and owing their happiness solely to the exertion of their minds and their muscles.

'One must give back, one must give back, one must give back!' repeated Monsieur Jérôme.

One must give back, indeed; one must restitute because one is liable to die of that which one steals from another. One must give back, because the sole cure, the only certainty of happiness lies in doing so. One must give back in a spirit of justice, and even more in one's own personal interest, since the happiness of each can only reside in the happiness of all. One must give back in order that one may enjoy better health and live a happy life in the midst of universal peace. One must give back because if all the unjust victors of life, all the egotistical holders of the public fortune, were to restore the wealth that they squander for their personal pleasures--the great estates, the great industrial enterprises, the roads, the towns--peace would be restored to-morrow, love would flower once more among men, and there would be such an abundance of possessions that not one single being would be left in penury. One must give back because one must set the example if one desires that other wealthy folk may understand, may realise whence have come all the evils from which they suffer, and may be inspired to endow their descendants with renewed vigour by plunging them once more into active life, daily work. One must give back, too, whilst there is yet time to do so, whilst there is still some nobility in returning to one's comrades, in showing them that one was mistaken, and that one returns to one's place in the ranks to participate in the common effort, with the hope that the hour of justice and peace will soon strike. And one must give back in order to die with a clear conscience, a heart joyful at having accomplished one's duty, at leaving a repairing and liberating lesson to the last of one's race, so that he may restore it, save it from error, and perpetuate it in strength, delight, and beauty.

'One must give back, one must give back!'

Tears had appeared in Suzanne's eyes as she perceived the exaltation with which her son Paul was filled by her grandfather's words; whilst Boisgelin expressed his irritation by impatient movements.

'But, grandfather,' said she, 'to whom and how are we to give back?'

The old man turned his bright eyes upon Luc. 'If I desired the founder of La Crêcherie to be present,' said he, 'it was in order that he might hear me and help you, my children. He has already done much for the work of reparation, he alone can intervene and restore what remains of our fortune to the sons and grandsons of those who were my own and my father's comrades.'

Luc was filled with emotion by the wondrous nobility of the scene, yet he hesitated, for he could divine Boisgelin's keen hostility. 'I can only do one thing,' said he--'that is, if the owners of the Abyss are willing I will procure them admission into our association at La Crêcherie. In the same way as other factories have already done, the Abyss will increase our family--double, in fact, the importance of our growing town. If by 'giving back' you mean a return to increase of justice, a step towards the absolute justice of the future, I will help you, I will consent to what you say with all my heart.'

'I know you will,' Monsieur Jérôme slowly answered; 'I ask nothing more.'

But Boisgelin, unable to restrain himself any longer, began to protest. 'Ah! that is not what I desire. However much it may distress me to do so, I am willing to sell the Abyss to La Crêcherie. A price will have to be agreed upon, and in addition to the amount which may be fixed I desire to retain an interest in the enterprise, which also will have to be arranged. I need money and I wish to sell.'

This was the plan which he had been maturing for some days past, in the idea that Luc was eager to secure possession of the Abyss land, and that he would be able to obtain a considerable sum from him at once, as well as a future income. But this plan entirely collapsed when Luc declared in a voice expressive of irrevocable determination: 'It is impossible for us to buy. It is contrary to the spirit which guides us. We are simply an association, a family open to all those brothers who may wish to join us.'

Then Monsieur Jérôme, whose bright eyes had been fixed on Boisgelin, resumed with sovereign tranquillity of manner: 'It is I who wish it and who order it. My granddaughter, Suzanne, here present, is co-proprietress of the Abyss, and she will refuse her consent to any other arrangement than that which I desire. And, like myself, I am sure that she will have but one regret, that of being unable to restore everything, of having to accept interest on her capital, which she will dispose of as her heart may dictate.'

And as Boisgelin remained silent, submitting to the others with the weakness that had come with his ruin, the old man continued: 'But that is not all, there remain La Guerdache and the farm--they must be given back, given back.'

Then, though he was again experiencing a difficulty in speaking and was well-nigh exhausted, he made his last desires known. As the Abyss would be blended with La Crêcherie, he wished the farm to join the association of Les Combettes, so as to enlarge the fields which had been united by Lenfant, Yvonnot, and all the other peasants, who had been living together like brothers since a proper understanding of their interests had reconciled them. There would be but one stretch of earth, one common mother, loved by all, tilled by all, and feeding all. The whole plain of La Roumagne would end by yielding one vast harvest to fill the granaries of regenerated Beauclair. And as for La Guerdache, which entirely belonged to Suzanne, he charged her to restore it to the poor and suffering, so that she might keep nothing of the property which had poisoned the Qurignons. Then, reverting to Paul, who still sat on the edge of the bed, and taking his hand in his own, and looking at him earnestly with his eyes which were now growing dim, Monsieur Jérôme said in a lower and lower voice: 'One must give back, one must give back, my child. You will keep nothing, you will give yonder park to the old comrades, so that they may rejoice there on high days, and so that their wives and children may walk there and enjoy hours of gaiety and good health under the fine trees. And you will also give back this house, this huge residence which we did not know how to fill in spite of all our money, for I wish it to belong to the wives and the children of poor workmen. They will be welcomed here and nursed when they are ailing or when they are weary. Keep nothing, give all, all back, my child, if you wish to save yourself from poison. And work and live solely on the fruits of your work, and seek out the daughter of some old comrade who still works and marry her, so that she may bring you handsome children, who also will work, who will be just and happy beings, and in their turn have handsome children for the eternal work of futurity. Keep nothing, my child, give everything back, for therein alone lies salvation, peace, and joy.'

They were all weeping now--never had a more beautiful, a loftier, a more heroic breath passed over human souls. The great room had become august. And the eyes of the old man, which had filled it with light, faded slowly, whilst his voice likewise became fainter, returning to eternal silence. He had at last accomplished his sublime work of reparation, truth, and justice, to help on the advent of the happiness which is the primordial right of every man. And his duty done, that same evening he died.

Before then, however, when Suzanne and Luc left Monsieur Jérôme's room together, they found themselves alone for a moment in the little _salon_. They were so overcome by emotion that their hearts rose to their lips.

'Rely on me,' said Luc. 'I swear to you that I will watch over the fulfilment of the supreme desires which have been committed to you. I will attend to matters from this moment.'

She had taken hold of his hands. 'Oh! my friend,' she answered, 'I place my faith in you. I know what miracles you have already performed, and I do not doubt the prodigy which you will accomplish by reconciling us all. Ah! there is nothing but love. Ah! if I had only been loved as I myself loved!'

She was trembling. The secret of which she herself had been ignorant so long, escaped her at that solemn moment. 'My friend, my friend,' she repeated, 'what strength I should have had for doing good, what help might I not have given had I felt beside me the arm of a just man, a hero, one whom I should have made my god! But if it be too late for that, will you at least accept what help I may be able to give as a friend, a sister----'

He understood her. It was a repetition of Sœurette's sweet, sad case. She had loved him without revealing it, without even owning it to herself, like an honest woman eager for tenderness, who amidst the torments of her household dreamt of happy love. And now that Josine was chosen, now that all else was dead without possibility of resurrection, she gave herself, even as Sœurette had done, as a sisterly companion, a devoted friend, who longed to participate in his mission.

'If I will accept your help!' cried Luc, who was touched to tears. 'Ah! yes indeed, there is never enough affection, enough help and active tenderness. The work is vast, and you will have ample opportunities for giving without stint your heart. Come with us, my friend, and stay with us, and you will be part of my thoughts and my love.'

She was transported by his words, she threw herself into his arms, and they kissed. An indissoluble bond was being formed between them, a marriage of sentiment, of exquisite purity, in which there was nought but a common passion for the poor and the suffering, an inextinguishable desire to obliterate the misery of the world.

Months went by, and the liquidation of the affairs of the Abyss, which were extremely involved, proved a most laborious matter. Before everything else it was necessary to get rid of the debt of six hundred thousand francs. Arrangements were at last entered into with the creditors, who agreed to accept payment in annuities levied upon the share of profits to which the Abyss would be entitled when it entered the Crêcherie association. Then it was necessary to value the plant and materials saved from the fire. These, with all the land stretching along the Mionne as far as Old Beauclair, formed the share of capital which the Boisgelins brought into the association; and a modest income, levied on the profits before they were divided among the creditors, was ensured them. Old Qurignon's desires were but half fulfilled during that period of transition, when capital still held a position similar to that of work and intelligence, pending the time when, with the victory of sovereign work, it would altogether disappear.

At least, however, La Guerdache and the farm returned completely to the commonalty, the heirs of the toilers, who had formerly paid for them with the sweat of their brows, for as soon as the farm lands--entering the Combettes association in accordance with the long-planned schemes of Feuillat--began to prosper and yield gain, the whole of the money was employed to transform La Guerdache into a convalescent home for weak children and women who had recently become mothers. Free beds were installed there, with gratuitous board, and the park now belonged to the humble ones of the world, forming a huge garden, a paradise as of dreamland, where children played, where mothers recovered their health, where the multitude enjoyed recreation as in some palace of nature which had become the palace of one and all.

Years went by. Luc had ceded one of the little houses of La Crêcherie, near the pavilion which he still occupied, to the Boisgelins. And at first that modest life proved very hard for Boisgelin, who did not become resigned to it without violent fits of revolt. At one moment he even wished to go to Paris to live there chancewise, as he listed. But his innate sloth and the impossibility of earning his own living rendered him as weak as a child, and placed him in the hands of whoever cared to take him. Since his downfall Suzanne, so sensible, so gentle, and yet so firm, had acquired absolute authority over him, and he always ended by doing what she wished, like a poor rudderless creature carried away by the stream of life. Soon, too, among that active world of workers he felt idleness weighing upon him to such a degree that he began to desire some occupation. He felt weary of dragging himself about all day long, he suffered from a secret feeling of shame, a need of action, for he could no longer tire himself with the management and squandering of a large fortune. Shooting remained a resource for him during the winter months, but as soon as the fine weather came there was nothing for him to do except to ride out occasionally, and dismal _ennui_ then crushed him down. And so when Suzanne prevailed on Luc to confide an inspectorship to him, a kind of control over a department of the general stores, which meant employment for three hours of his time every day, he ended by accepting the offer. His health, which had suffered, then improved; still he always displayed anxiety, wearing a lost, unhappy air, such as one might find in a man who had fallen from one planet to another.

And years again went by. Suzanne had become the friend and sister of Josine and Sœurette, in whose work she participated. All three surrounded Luc, sustaining him and completing him, like personifications of kindness, love, and gentleness. He called them with a smile his three virtues. They busied themselves with the _crèches_, the schools, the infirmaries, and the convalescent homes, they went wherever there might be weakness to protect, pain to assuage, joy to initiate. Sœurette and Suzanne, in particular, took on themselves the most ungrateful tasks, those which require personal abnegation, entire renunciation; whilst Josine, having to attend to her children, her ever-growing home, naturally bestowed less of her time upon others. She, moreover, was the _amorosa_, the flower of beauty and desire, whilst Sœurette and Suzanne were the friends, the consolers, and the counsellors. At times some very bitter trials still fell on Luc, and often, on quitting his wife's embrace, it was to his two friends that he listened, charging them to dress the wounds they spoke of and devote themselves to the common work of salvation. It was by and for women that the future city had to be founded.

Eight years had already elapsed when Paul Boisgelin, who was seven-and-twenty, married Bonnaire's eldest daughter, then twenty-four years old. As soon as the lands of La Guerdache had entered the Combettes association, Paul, with Feuillat, the former farmer, had begun to take a passionate interest in promoting the fertility of the vast expanse which those fields had enlarged. He had become an agriculturist, and directed one of the sections of the domain, which it had been necessary to divide into several groups. And it was at his parents' little house at La Crêcherie, whither he returned to sleep every night, that he had renewed his acquaintance with Antoinette, who lived with her parents in a neighbouring house. Close intercourse had sprung up between that simple family of workers and the former heiress of the Qurignons, who now lived so modestly and welcomed every one so kindly. And although Madame Bonnaire, the terrible La Toupe, had remained a rather difficult customer to deal with, the simple nobility of character displayed by Bonnaire, that hero of work, one of the founders of the new city, had sufficed to render the intercourse intimate. It was charming to see the children loving one another, and drawing yet closer the links which had thus been formed between the representatives of two classes which had formerly fought one against the other. Antoinette, who resembled her father, being a good-looking, sturdy brunette, possessed of no little natural gracefulness, had passed through Sœurette's schools, and now helped her at the big dairy which was installed at the end of the park beside the ridge of the Bleuse Mountains. As she said with a laugh, she was simply a dairymaid, expert with milk, and cheese, and butter. When the young people married, he, Paul, a _bourgeois_ by birth, who had gone back to the soil, and she, Antoinette, a daughter of the people working with her hands, a great _fête_ was given, for there was a desire to celebrate as gloriously as possible those symbolical nuptials, which proclaimed the reconciliation, the union of repentant capitalism and triumphant work.

During the ensuing year, one warm June day, shortly after the birth of Antoinette's first child, the Boisgelins, accompanied by Luc, once more found themselves together at La Guerdache. Nearly ten years had now elapsed since the death of Monsieur Jérôme and the restitution of the estate to the people in accordance with his desire. Antoinette had for some time been a _pensionnaire_ in the convalescent home which had been installed in the château where the Qurignons had reigned; and, leaning on the arm of her husband, she was now able to stroll under the beautiful foliage of the park, whilst Suzanne, like a good grandmother, carried the baby. A few paces in the rear walked Luc and Boisgelin. And what memories arose at the sight of that princely house, those copses, those lawns, those avenues where the uproar of costly _fêtes_, the galloping of horses and the baying of hounds no longer resounded, but where the humble of the world at last enjoyed the health-giving open air, and the restful delight that came from the great trees! All the luxury of that magnificent domain was now theirs, the convalescent home opened its bright bed-rooms, its pleasant _salons_, its well-stocked larders to them, the park reserved for them its shady paths, its crystalline springs, its lawns where for their delight gardeners cultivated beds of perfume-shedding flowers. They found there their long-withheld share of beauty and grace. And it was delightful to see infancy, youth, and motherhood--which for centuries had been condemned to suffering, shut up in sunless hovels, dying of filthy wretchedness--suddenly summoned to partake of the joy of life, the share of happiness belonging by right to every human creature, that luxury of happiness at which innumerable generations of starvelings had gazed from afar without ever being able to touch it!

As the young married couple, followed by the others, at last reached a pool of water glistening with mirror-like limpidity under the blue sky, beyond a row of willows, Luc began to laugh softly.

'Ah, my friends!' said he, 'what a gay and pretty scene this recalls to me! You know nothing about it, eh? Nevertheless it was at the edge of this calm water that Paul and Antoinette were betrothed a score or so of years ago.'

Then he spoke of the delightful scene which he had witnessed beside that pond on the occasion of his first visit to La Guerdache--the invasion of the park by three youngsters of the streets, Nanet bringing his companions, Lucien and Antoinette Bonnaire, through a gap in the hedge in order that they might play beside the pond; then Lucien's ingenious invention, the little boat which travelled all alone over the water; and the arrival of the three little _bourgeois_, Paul Boisgelin, Nise Delaveau, and Louise Mazelle, who all marvelled at the boat, and immediately made friends with the intruders. And couples had been formed quite naturally, there had been betrothals at once, Paul with Antoinette, Nise with Nanet, Louise with Lucien, amidst the smiling complicity of kind-hearted Nature, the eternal mother.

'Don't you remember it?' asked Luc gaily.

The young couple, who joined in his laughter, declared that he went back too far. 'If I was only four years old,' said Antoinette, who felt highly amused, 'my memory could not have been a very strong one.'

But Paul, gazing fixedly into the past, was making an effort to recall the scene. 'I was seven,' said he. 'Wait a moment! It seems to me that I vaguely remember--the little boat had to be brought back with a pole whenever its wheels ceased turning; and then one of the little girls narrowly missed falling into the pond; and afterwards the intruders, the little bandits, ran away on seeing some people approach.'

'That was it!' cried Luc. 'Ah! so you remember! Well, for my part, I remember that day experiencing a quiver of hope in the future, for that scene in some measure suggested the reconciliation which was to come. Childhood in its naïve fraternity was at work here, taking a first step towards justice and peace. And whatever fresh happiness you may bring about, you know, will be yet increased by that little gentleman yonder.'

He pointed to the baby, little Ludovic, now lying in the arms of Suzanne, who felt so happy at being a grandmother. She, on her side, jestingly retorted: 'For the time being he is very good, because he is asleep. Later on, my dear Luc, we will marry him to one of your granddaughters, and in that manner the reconciliation will be complete, all the combatants of yesterday will be united and pacified in the persons of their descendants. Are you willing? Shall we have the betrothal to-day?'

'Am I willing? Certainly I am! Our great-grandchildren will push on our work hand in hand.'

Paul and Antoinette felt moved, and kissed one another, whilst Boisgelin, who was not listening, looked round the park, his former estate, in a mournful manner, though without any bitterness, to such a degree indeed had the new world upset and stupefied him. And then they all resumed their walk along the shady paths, Luc and Suzanne silently exchanging smiles which told their joy.

When they all came back to the house they paused for a moment before it, to the left of the steps, under the windows of the very room where Monsieur Jérôme had died. From that point one perceived--between the crests of the great trees--the distant roofs of Beauclair, and then La Crêcherie and the Abyss. They gazed upon that spreading panorama in silence. They could plainly distinguish the Abyss, now built afresh on the same plan as La Crêcherie, and forming with it one sole city of work--work, reorganised and ennobled, transformed into man's pride, health, and gaiety. More justice and more love were born there every morning. And the waves of little smiling houses, set in greenery, those waves which the anxious Delaveau had seen always advancing, had flowed over the once black land without a halt, ever enlarging the future city. They now occupied the whole expanse from the ridge of the Bleuse Mountains to the Mionne, and they would soon cross the narrow torrent, to sweep away Old Beauclair, that sordid agglomeration of the hovels of servitude and agony. And as they advanced they built up stone by stone--under the fraternal sun, even to the verge of the fertile fields of La Roumagne--the city where all at last would be freedom, justice, and happiness.

II

Whilst evolution was carrying Beauclair towards its new destiny, love, young, gay, and victorious, asserted itself, and on all sides there came frequent marriages, drawing various classes together and hastening the advent of harmony and final peace. Love the victorious overthrew all obstacles, triumphed over the greatest resistance with a passion full of happy vitality, an explosion of joy which proclaimed in the broad sunlight what happiness there was in being, in loving, in creating yet more and more.

Luc and Josine had set the example. During the last ten years a family of three boys and two girls had sprung up around them. Hilaire, the eldest, born before the collapse of the Abyss, was already eleven. Then, at intervals of two years, had come the others: Charles, who was now nine years old; Thérèse, who was seven; Pauline, who was five; and Jules, who was three. To the old pavilion another structure had been added, and there these children romped, filling the place with gaiety and hope, and growing up for future unions. As Luc, in delight, often said to the smiling Josine, the constancy of their affection sprang largely from that triumphant fruitfulness. In Josine, the _amorosa_ had now largely given way to the mother; yet she and Luc were still lovers, for love does not age, it remains the eternal flame, the immortal brazier whence the life of the world derives its being. Never had a home resounded with brighter gaiety than theirs, full as it was of children and flowers. And they loved one another so well there, that misfortune passed them by. Whenever any recollection of the dolorous past returned, when Josine recalled her sufferings and the downfall in which she would have perished had it not been for Luc's helping hand, she flung her arms around his neck in a transport of inexhaustible gratitude, whilst he, full of emotion, felt that the iniquitous opprobrium from which he had saved her rendered her all the dearer to him.

Nanet, little Nanet, who was now becoming a man, lodged with Luc, beside his 'big sister,' as he still called Josine. Gifted with keen intelligence and an enterprising bravery which was ever on the alert, the young fellow captivated Luc, whose dearest pupil he became, a youthful disciple full of the master's lessons. And meantime, at the Jordans', whose house was so near to Luc's, Nise, little Nise, was likewise growing up in the affectionate charge of Sœurette, who had given her a home on the morrow of the destruction of the Abyss, happy in being able to adopt the young girl, in whom she found a charming companion and assistant. And it followed that Nanet and Nise, seeing one another every day, ended by living solely one for the other. As a matter of fact, did not their betrothal date from infancy, from the distant days when child-love, divine ingenuousness, had filled them with a craving to be together, impelling them to brave all punishments and even to scale walls in order to meet? They had been fair and curly like little lambs in those days, and how silvery had seemed their laughter when at each meeting they embraced, knowing nothing of what parted them socially, she the _bourgeoise_ by birth, the master's daughter, and he the urchin of the streets, the penniless son of a wretched manual worker. Then had come the frightful tempest of flames, Nise saved by Nanet, to whose neck she had clung, both of them covered with burns, and at one moment in danger of death. And to-day also they were both fair and curly, they gave vent to the same light laughter as in childhood, and displayed a similarity of demeanour as if one matched the other. But Nise had now become a big girl, Nanet a big youth, and they adored one another.

The idyll lasted for nearly seven years longer, whilst Luc was making a man of Nanet, and Sœurette was helping Nise to grow up in kindliness and beauty. Nise had been thirteen years of age at the time of the terrible death of her father and mother, whose remains had been reduced to ashes, in such wise that nothing of them was found under the remnants of the burnt house. For long years the girl shuddered at the recollection of that night. There was no reason to hurry her marriage; so far as that was concerned, indeed, her friends wished to wait until she should be twenty in order that she herself might come to a free and sensible decision. Besides, Nanet himself was very young, her elder by scarcely three years, and still an apprentice. With their gay playful natures, moreover, simply intent as they were on making merry together, they themselves were in no hurry. They met every evening, and found a simple enjoyment in telling one another what they had done during the day. They would often sit hand in hand, and when they parted for the night they exchanged an affectionate kiss. But amidst their cordial agreement there were at times some little quarrels. Nanet occasionally found Nise too proud and wilful; she put on her princess's airs, as he was wont to remark. Again, he sometimes thought her too coquettish, too fond of fine attire and of the _fêtes_ at which she displayed it. Of course it was not forbidden to appear beautiful--on the contrary; but it was not right to spoil one's beauty by assuming an air of contempt for others. At first Nise, in whom reappeared some little of her mother's passion for enjoyment and her father's despotic disposition, grew angry when she was reproved, and endeavoured to demonstrate that she was perfection itself. But as she worshipped Nanet she ended by confiding in him, listening to him, and striving to please him by becoming the best and gentlest of little women. And when, as sometimes happened, she did not succeed in this, she remarked with a laugh that if she should ever have a daughter the latter would no doubt be much better than herself, because it was necessary that the blood of the princes of this world should have time to become democratised among a more brotherly line of descendants.

The wedding at last took place, when Nise was twenty and Nanet twenty-three years old. It had long been wished for, foreseen, and awaited. For seven years not a day had elapsed without a step towards this _dénouement_ of the long and happy idyll. And as this marriage of Delaveau's daughter with the brother of Josine, who was now to all intents and purposes Luc's wife, extinguished all hatred, and sealed a pact of alliance, there was a desire that it should be made a festival celebrating forgiveness of the past and the new community's radiant entry into the future. With this object it was decided that there should be singing and dancing on the very site of the Abyss, in one of the halls now erected there as an adjunct to La Crêcherie, which at present spread over acres and acres of ground, and ever and ever grew.

Luc and Sœurette were the organisers and masters of the ceremonies of this marriage festival, as well as the witnesses of the bridal pair, Luc being witness for Nanet, and Sœurette for Nise. They wished to impart to the festival all the splendour of a triumph, to endow it with the gaiety of hope's fulfilment, to make it like the very victory of the city of work and peace, now founded and prosperous. It is good that communities should indulge in great rejoicings; public life needs frequent days of beauty, joy, and exultation. Thus Luc and Sœurette chose the great foundry hall, where so many of the monster-like hammers, the gigantic rolling bridges, the movable cranes of prodigious strength were gathered together. The new buildings, all bricks and steelwork, were clean and healthy, and full of joyous brightness with their large windows through which streamed both air and sunlight. And the plant was left in position, especially as, for a festival of triumphant work, one could not have devised any better decorations than were provided by those gigantic appliances, whose powerful forms were instinct with a sovereign beauty compounded of logic, strength, and certainty. However, they were decorated with foliage and crowned with flowers, even as were altars in ancient times. The brick walls, too, were ornamented with garlands of verdure, and the very pavement was strewn with roses and broom flowers. The whole seemed like the blossoming of man's effort to attain happiness, an effort which had ended by flowering there, scattering perfume around the toil of the worker, a toil once unjust and hard, but now attractive and leading solely to happiness.

Two processions set forth, one from the home of the bridegroom, the other from that of the bride. On his side Luc, followed by his wife Josine and their children, brought the hero Nanet; on hers, Sœurette, with her brother Jordan, brought their adopted daughter, the heroine Nise. The whole population of the new city, where all work was stopped in token of rejoicing, lined the road to acclaim the bridal pair. The beautiful sun shone out, the gay houses were decked with bright colours, the greenery was full of flowers and birds. And in the rear of either _cortège_ followed the crowd of workers, a vast concourse of joyous people who gradually invaded the great halls of the works, which were as lofty and as broad as the naves of the old-time cathedrals. The foundry hall, whither the bridal couple repaired, was soon crowded to excess in spite of its immensity. In addition to Luc, his family, and the Jordans, there were the Boisgelins with Paul, who at that time had not yet married Antoinette, for their wedding was only to take place four years later. Then came the Bonnaires, the Bourrons, even the Fauchards, indeed, all those whose arms had contributed to the victory of work. Those men of good will and faith, those workers of the first days, had increased and multiplied. Was not the throng of comrades around them an enlargement of their families, an assemblage of brothers whose numbers still increased daily? There were five thousand of them, and soon there would be ten. They would increase to a hundred thousand, to a million, and would at last absorb all mankind.

The ceremony, in the midst of the powerful machinery decked with flowers and garlands of verdure, was one of sovereign and touching simplicity.

With smiling mien Luc and Sœurette placed Nanet's and Nise's hands one in the other.

'Love one another with all your hearts,' they said to them, 'and have handsome children who will love one another as you yourselves will be loved.'

The crowd raised acclamations, and shouted the word 'Love!' For it was King Love who alone could render work fruitful, by making the race ever more and more numerous, and inflaming it with desire, the eternal source of life.

But in all this there was already too much solemnity for Nanet and Nise, who had loved one another so playfully ever since childhood. Although those two little curly lambs had grown up, they remained like toys in their festival raiment, both clad in white, charming and delightful. And they were not content with a ceremonious hand-shake. They fell upon each other's neck.

'Ah! my little Nise, how happy I am to have you for my wife at last, after waiting for you for years and years!'

'Ah! my little Nanet, how happy I am to belong to you, for it is quite true, you have earned it!'

'And little Nise, do you remember when I pulled you up by the arms to help you over the walls, and when I carried you pick-a-back, and played at being a rearing horse?'

'And little Nanet, do you remember when we played at hide-and-seek, and you ended by finding me among the rosebushes, so well hidden there that it was enough to make me die of laughing?'

'Little Nise, little Nise, we'll love each other as we played, very heartily, with all, all the strength of health and gaiety.'

'Little Nanet, little Nanet, we played so much, and we will love one another so much, that we shall love yet again in our children, and play again even with our children's children.'

And they embraced, and laughed, and played together, raised to the highest felicity. The throng, filled with enthusiasm by the sight, traversed by a wave of sonorous gaiety, clapped hands and acclaimed love, almighty love, which without cessation creates more and more life and happiness. Then the singing began, chorus singing, in which the aged sang their well-earned rest, the men the triumph of their toil, the women the helpful sweetness of their love, the children the confident cheerfulness of their hopes. Afterwards came the dances, with a great final round and chain, which brought all that brotherly little people hand in hand, stretching out and revolving for hours to the strains of gay music, through the halls of the huge works. They had formerly toiled so much and suffered so much in the dirty, grimy, unhealthy inferno which had stood there, and which the flames had swept away. The sunshine, the air, and life, now entered freely. And the marriage _ronde_ still came and went around the huge appliances, the colossal presses, the formidable steam hammers, the gigantic planing-machines, which wore a smiling aspect beneath their adornments of flowers and foliage, whilst the young married couple led the dance, as if in them rested the soul of all those things, that morrow of increase in equity and fraternity, which the victory of their long affection had ensured.

Luc was preparing a surprise for Jordan, for he also wished to celebrate the labour of the scientist whose endeavours would contribute more than a hundred years of politics could have done to the happiness of the city. When the night had fallen and it was quite dark, the whole works suddenly glowed, thousands of lamps casting the gay light of day-time over the place. Jordan's researches, it should be said, had at last yielded fruit. After many defeats he had devised a system for the transport of electrical force without loss, employing new appliances, ingenious means of transmission. Henceforth the cost of conveying coal was saved, it was burnt at the pit's mouth, and the machinery which transformed calorical into electrical energy sent it to La Crêcherie by special cables, which allowed of no loss on the way, in such wise that the cost price was now only half of what it had formerly been. This then was a first great victory, La Crêcherie profusely illumined, power distributed abundantly among both the large and the small appliances, comfort increased, work facilitated, and fortune augmented. And at the same time it was virtually a fresh step towards happiness.

When Jordan, on beholding the festive illumination, understood Luc's affectionate intention, he began to laugh like a child.

'Ah! my friend, so you give me a bouquet too! As a matter of fact, I rather deserve it, for as you must remember I had been striving to solve the problem for ten long years! What obstacles, what defeats did I not encounter when I imagined success to be a certainty! But, no matter, I set to work afresh on the morrow, on the ruins of all the experiments that had failed. A man always ends by succeeding when he works.'

Luc was laughing with his friend, whose courage and faith he shared.

'I know that very well,' said he in reply; 'you are the living proof of it. I know no greater, loftier master of energy than you, and I have tried to follow your example. Well, so night is now vanquished, you have put darkness to flight, and as electricity at present costs so little, we shall be able to light up a planet above La Crêcherie, to replace the sun as soon as evening comes. And you have also wrought economy in human toil, for, thanks to the abundance of mechanical power yielded by your system, one man now suffices for work in which two had to be employed. Thus we acclaim you as the master of light and warmth and power.'

Jordan, wrapped in a rug which Sœurette, fearing the coolness of the evening, had thrown over his shoulders, was still looking at the huge pile around him, now sparkling like a palace of fairyland. Short and puny, with a pale face and the feeble air of one who is on the point of dying, he strolled about those glowing halls, examining them curiously, for during the last ten years he had scarcely stirred from his laboratory. Thus he marvelled at the results already obtained, the success of a work of which he had been both the least known and the most active artisan.

'Yes, yes,' he muttered, 'the result is very good already, no little ground has been gained. We are advancing, the future we dreamt of is nearer to us. And I owe you my apologies, my dear Luc, for I did not hide from you at the outset that I scarcely believed in the success of your mission. But you still have a great deal to accomplish, and for my part, alas! I have done next to nothing by the side of all that I should like to do.'

He became grave and thoughtful. 'Though we have reduced the cost of electricity by one half, it still remains too high,' he said; 'and, besides, all the intricate and expensive installations at the mouths of the pits, the steam engines and the boilers, without mentioning the miles of cables which have to be kept in repair, are barbarous, and consume time and money. Something else is needed, something more practical, simple, and direct. I know very well in what direction I ought to look, but such a search seems madness, and I don't dare to tell people what work I have undertaken, for I myself can't describe it clearly. Yet yes, one ought to suppress the engine and the boiler, which are cumbersome intermediaries between the coal extracted and the electricity which is produced. In a word, one ought to be able to transform the calorical energy contained in the coal into electrical energy, without having to bring mechanical energy into play. I don't yet know how that is to be done, but I have set to work, and I hope to succeed. And if I do, you'll then see that electricity will cost scarcely anything. We shall be able to give it to everybody, spread it broadcast, and make it the victorious agent of universal comfort.'

He grew more and more enthusiastic, drawing himself up with passionate gestures as he spoke, he who as a rule remained so silent and thoughtful.

'The day must come,' he resumed, 'when electricity will belong to everybody, like the water of the rivers and the breezes of the heavens. It will be necessary to give it abundantly to one and all, and to allow men to dispose of it as they choose. It must circulate in our towns like the very blood of social life. In each house one must merely have to turn on a switch or a tap to obtain a profusion of power, heat, and light. At night-time, in the black sky, electricity will set another sun, which will extinguish the stars. And it will suppress winter, it will bring eternal summer into being, warming the old earth, and ascending to melt the snow even among the clouds. This is why I am not particularly proud of what I have done as yet, for it is very little by the side of all that has to be accomplished.'

And with an air of quiet disdain he concluded: 'I can't even get a practical result from my electrical furnaces. They are still mere experimental furnaces. Electricity is still too costly--one must wait till its employment proves remunerative, and for that to be it should not cost us more than the waters of the rivers and the atmosphere of the heavens. When I am able to give it in a flood without counting, my furnaces will revolutionise metallurgy. Oh! I well know the only path to follow, and I have already set to work!'

The night festival was a marvellous one. The dancing and singing had begun afresh in the dazzling halls, where the throng continued celebrating the marriage until the time came to escort Nanet and Nise to their nuptial home, amidst acclamations in honour of the love which had united them.

About this time love likewise revolutionised the _bourgeoisie_ of Beauclair, and it was in the home of the Mazelles, those idlers living on their income, that the tempest first burst forth. Their daughter Louise had always surprised and upset them, so different was her nature from their own. An extremely active and enterprising girl, she was ever at work in the house, declaring that idleness would kill her. Her parents, who placed their great delight in doing nothing, could not understand how it was that she spoilt her days by useless agitation. She was an only child, said they, and would have a very fine fortune invested in State Rentes, and so was she not unreasonable in refusing to shut herself up in her cosy nook, well sheltered from the worries of life? They, her parents, were content with their egotistical happiness, and why therefore did she trouble about the passing beggar, the ideas which were changing the world, the incidents which disturbed the streets? But whatever might be said, she remained all of a quiver, full of life, taking a passionate interest in everything; and thus, amidst her parents' deep love for her, there was a great deal of stupefaction at having a daughter so utterly unlike themselves. At last she utterly upset them by a _coup de passion_, at which they had at first simply shrugged their shoulders, thinking it some mere fancy or whim. But things soon came to such a climax that they almost believed the end of the world to be at hand.

Louise Mazelle had remained a great friend of Nise Delaveau, whom she had frequently met at the home of the Boisgelins, since the latter had been installed at La Crêcherie. There also she had again met Lucien Bonnaire, her former playmate, now a tall and handsome fellow of twenty-three, whilst she herself was twenty. Lucien no longer made little boats which travelled by themselves over the water, but under Luc's guidance he had become a very intelligent and inventive mechanician, destined to render great services to La Crêcherie, where he already fitted up the machinery. He was not a 'monsieur,' he took a sort of courageous pride in remaining a simple workman, like his father, whom he revered. And no doubt, in the ardent love with which Louise was inspired for him, there was some little of the natural rebellion which urged her on to flout _bourgeois_ notions, and to behave differently from the folk of her sphere. At all events her old friendship for Lucien became a passionate love that chafed at obstacles. He, touched by the keen attachment of that pretty, active, smiling girl, ended by loving her quite as deeply; but he was certainly the more reasonable of the two, and desired to hurt nobody's feelings. He suffered at the idea that she was too refined and too rich for him, and simply spoke of remaining a bachelor if he could not have her; whereas she, at the mere thought of opposition to their marriage, became wildly rebellious, and talked of throwing up position and fortune to go and live with him.

During nearly six months the battle went on. Lucien's parents looked on the proposed marriage with covert distrust. Bonnaire, with his common sense, would much have preferred to see his son marry some mate's daughter. Time had already done its work, and there was no reason to be proud of seeing one's son rise to another class, on the arm of a daughter of the expiring _bourgeoisie_. All the profit of such an alliance would soon be on the side of the _bourgeoisie_ itself, which would intermarry with the people in order to regain blood and health and strength. Quarrels on the subject of the match at last broke out in Bonnaire's household. His wife, the proud and terrible Toupe, would doubtless have consented to it, on condition that she also became a lady, with fine gowns and jewels to wear. Nought of the evolution now in progress around her had lessened her craving for domination and display. She retained her hateful disposition even in her present easy circumstances, often reproaching her husband for not having made a big fortune like Monsieur Mazelle, an artful fellow, who had done no work for years past. However, when she heard Lucien declare that even if he should marry Louise, not a copper of the Mazelles' money should ever enter his home, she quite lost her head, and in her turn opposed the match, since it would not bring her any profit.

One evening there was a stormy explanation between La Toupe, Bonnaire, and Lucien, in the presence of Daddy Lunot, who was still alive, and more than seventy years old. They had just finished dining in the bright, clean dining-room, whose window opened on to the garden greenery. There were even flowers on the table, where nowadays food was always plentiful. Daddy Lunot, who at present had as much tobacco as he cared for, had just lighted his pipe, when La Toupe, for the mere pleasure of getting into a temper, according to her old habit, turned to Lucien and said to him sourly: 'So it's decided, eh--you still mean to marry that _demoiselle_? I saw you with her again this morning at Boisgelin's door. It seems to me that if you cared anything for us you might have ceased meeting her, since you know that both your father and myself are by no means over-pleased with the idea of that marriage.'

Lucien, like a good son, avoided argument, particularly as he knew it to be useless. Turning towards Bonnaire, he simply said: 'But I think that my father is ready to consent.'

To La Toupe this was like a whip-stroke, which urged her upon her husband: 'What!' she exclaimed. 'You give your consent without warning me of it? You told me less than a fortnight ago that such a marriage wasn't reasonable to your thinking, and that you would have fears for our lad's happiness if he were so foolish as to make it! So you turn about like a weather-cock, eh?'

Bonnaire quietly began to explain things: 'I should have preferred to see the lad make another choice, but he's nearly four-and-twenty, and I'm not going to force my will on him in a matter which concerns his own heart. He knows what I think, and he'll do what he thinks best.'

'Ah!' shouted back La Toupe, 'you're easily got over; you fancy yourself a free man, but you always end by saying the same as the others. During the twenty years that you've been here with Monsieur Luc you've repeated that his ideas and yours are not the same, and that he ought to have begun by seizing the instruments of work without accepting money from the _bourgeois_. But all the same, you give way to Monsieur Luc's wishes, and to-day, perhaps, you begin to like what you've done together.'

She rattled on, striving to hurt her husband's feelings and pride. She had often exasperated him by trying to prove that his actions were in contradiction with his principles. This time, however, he simply shrugged his shoulders. 'There's no doubt that what we've done together is very good,' said he. 'I may still regret that Monsieur Luc did not follow my ideas; only you ought to be the last to complain of what exists here, for we know nothing more of want, we are happy, happier than any one of those _bourgeois_ whom you dream about.'

This reply irritated her the more. 'As for what exists here, it would be kind of you to explain it to me, for I've never understood anything of it, you know,' she said. 'If you are happy, so much the better for you; but I'm not happy, no, I'm not. Happiness is when one has plenty of money and can retire and do nothing afterwards. All your rigmarole, your division of profits, your stores where one gets things cheaply, your coupons and your cash-desks, will never put a hundred thousand francs into my pocket so that I may spend them as I please, on things which I like--I am an unhappy woman, a very unhappy woman!'

She was exaggerating things with the desire to make herself disagreeable, yet there was truth in what she said. She had never grown accustomed to La Crêcherie, she suffered there like a coquettish, extravagant woman, whose instincts were wounded by Communistic solidarity. A clean and active housewife, but of a quarrelsome, stubborn, dull-witted nature, she continued making her home a hell, when it should have been full of comfort.

Bonnaire at last lost his patience so far as to say to her: 'You are mad; it is you who make yourself unhappy and us too!'

Thereupon she began to sob. Lucien, who felt very embarrassed whenever such disputes arose between his parents, had to emerge from his silence and kiss her and tell her that he loved and respected her. Nevertheless she clung to her views, and shouted to her husband, 'Ah! just ask my father what he thinks of your factory in which everybody has a share, and that wonderful justice and happiness of yours, which are to regenerate the world. He's an old workman, he is! You won't accuse him of saying foolish things like a woman. And he's seventy years old, so you can believe in his experience and sense!'

Turning to Daddy Lunot, who was sucking the stem of his pipe, with the blissful expression of a child, she went on: 'Isn't that so, father? Aren't they idiots with all their inventions to do without masters, and won't they end by making their own fingers smart?'

The old man looked at her in his bewildered way before answering in a husky voice: 'Of course--the Ragus and the Qurignons, ah! they were comrades once upon a time. There was Monsieur Michel, who was five years my senior. As for me, it was under Monsieur Jérôme that I entered the works. But before the others there was Monsieur Blaise, with whom my father, Jean Ragu, and my grandfather, Pierre Ragu worked. Pierre Ragu and Blaise Qurignon were mates together, two wire-drawers, who used the same anvil. And now you see the Qurignons are masters and great millionaires, and the Ragus have remained poor devils as they were before. Things can't change, and so one must believe that they are well as they are.'

He rambled slightly in the somnolence that had come over him, as over some very old, maimed, and forgotten beast of burden, who by a miracle had escaped the universal slaughterhouse. There were often days when he failed to remember what had happened on the previous one.

'But Daddy Lunot,' said Bonnaire, 'it so happens that things have changed a good deal for some time past. Monsieur Jérôme, whom you speak of, has long since been dead, and he gave back all that remained of his fortune.'

'Gave back--how's that?'

'Yes, he gave back to his old comrades the wealth which he owed to their toil and suffering. Don't you remember? it occurred a long time ago already.'

The old man searched in his dim memory. 'Ah! Yes, yes, I recollect--a funny business it was! Well, if he gave his money back he was a fool.'

The words were spoken sharply and contemptuously, for Daddy Lunot had never dreamt of anything but making a big fortune like the Qurignons, in order to enjoy life like a master, an idle gentleman, who amused himself from morning till night. That had remained his ideal, even as it was that of the whole generation of broken-down, exploited slaves, whoso sole regret was that they had not been born among the exploiters.

La Toupe burst into an insulting laugh. 'You see!' she cried, 'Father isn't such a fool as you others are; he's not the man to start on a wild-goose chase! Money's money; and when a man's rich he's the master!'

Bonnaire shrugged his broad shoulders, whilst Lucien gazed in silence through the window at the roses in the garden. What was the use of arguing? She represented the stubborn past, she would pass away in the Communist paradise, in the midst of fraternal happiness, denying its very existence and regretting the days of wretchedness when she had been obliged to save up ten sous one by one in order to buy herself a strip of ribbon.

Just then, however, Babette Bourron came in. Unlike La Toupe, she was ever gay, ever delighted with her new position. By her smiling and comforting optimism she had helped to save her simpleton of a husband from the pit into which Ragu had fallen. She had invariably shown confidence in the future, feeling certain that things would eventually turn out all right. And she often jestingly remarked that La Crêcherie, where work had become light, cleanly, and pleasant, where one and all lived amidst comforts formerly reserved to the _bourgeois_ alone, was like a fulfilment of her dreams of Paradise. Her doll-like face remained fresh-looking under her carelessly twisted hair, and radiant with the delight she felt at finding her husband cured of his passion for drink, and at living in a gay house of her own with two handsome children whom she would soon be marrying off.

'Well, so it's decided, eh?' she exclaimed. 'Lucien is going to marry Louise Mazelle, that charming little _bourgeoise_ who isn't ashamed of us?'

'Who told you that?' roughly asked La Toupe.

'Why, Madame Luc, Josine, whom I met this morning.'

La Toupe turned white with restrained wrath. Amidst her ceaseless irritation with La Crêcherie there was a great deal of hatred against Josine, whom she had never forgiven for having become the wife and helpmate of Luc, that hero whom all admired, and for having, moreover, a number of handsome children, who were now growing up for lives of happiness. Could she not remember the days when that wretched creature had been turned starving into the streets by her brother? Yet now she met her wearing a bonnet like a lady. That was a crushing blow. She would never be able to stomach the idea of that creature being happy.

'Josine,' she roughly exclaimed, 'would do better to make people forget what she calls her own marriage before meddling with marriages which don't concern her. And as for me, you do nothing but aggravate me, so just let me be!'

Then she rushed out of the room, banging the door behind her, and leaving the others in silent embarrassment. Babette was the first to laugh, accustomed as she was to the manners of her friend, whom she indulgently pronounced to be a good woman, though a wrong-headed one. Tears, however, had risen to the eyes of Lucien, for it was his future life that was at stake amidst all that quarrelling. His father pressed his hand in a friendly way, as if to promise that he would arrange matters. None the less Bonnaire himself remained very sad, quite upset at finding happiness at the mercy of family jars. Would a spiteful temper always suffice then to spoil the fruits of brotherliness? he wondered. Daddy Lunot alone retained his blissful unconsciousness, sitting there half asleep, with his pipe in his mouth.

If Lucien entertained no doubt of the eventual consent of his parents, Louise felt the resistance of hers increasing, and thus the battle became fiercer every day. The Mazelles adored their daughter, and it was in the name of this adoration that they refused to give way to her. There were no violent explanations between them, but they persevered in a kind of good-natured inertia, by which they fancied that the girl's patience would be tired out. In vain did she fill the house with the incessant rustling of her skirts, play feverishly on the piano, fling flowers out of the window, though they were by no means faded, and give many other signs of perturbation. They still peacefully smiled at her, made a pretence of understanding nothing, and strove to glut her with dainties and presents. She was enraged at being thus overwhelmed with douceurs when she was denied the one thing which would have pleased her; and at last she made up her mind to fall ill. She took to her bed, turned her face to the wall, and refused to answer her parents when they questioned her. Novarre, on being summoned, declared that such ailments did not come within the scope of his profession. The only way to cure girls who fell love-sick was to allow them to love as they desired. Thereupon the Mazelles, quite distracted, realising that the matter was becoming a serious one, held counsel together as to whether they ought to give way. They spent a whole night talking it over, and it seemed such a serious business, the consequences of which might be so great, that they lacked the courage to come to a decision between themselves. They resolved to bring their friends together in order to submit the matter to them. In the revolutionary state of affairs with which Beauclair was struggling, would it not be desertion on their part to give their daughter to a workman? They felt that such a union would be decisive, a final abdication on the part of the _bourgeoisie_, the mercantile and propertied folk. And it was therefore natural that the authorities, the leaders of the wealthy governing classes, should be consulted. Thus, one fine afternoon, they invited Sub-Prefect Châtelard, Mayor Gourier, Judge Gaume, and Abbé Marle to take tea with them in their flowery garden, where they had spent so many idle days, stretched face to face in large rocking chairs, and gazing at their roses, without even tiring themselves by talking.

'You see,' said Mazelle to his wife, 'we will do what those gentlemen advise. They know more about such matters than we do, and nobody will be able to blame us for following their counsel. For my part I am quite losing my head, for all this business tortures my brain from morning till night.

'It's like me,' said Madame Mazelle. 'It isn't living to be obliged to keep on thinking and thinking. Nothing could be worse for my complaint, I'm sure of it.'

The tea was served in an arbour of greenery in the garden one beautiful, sunshiny afternoon. Sub-Prefect Châtelard and Mayor Gourier were the first to arrive. They had remained inseparable, linked it seemed even more closely together since the death of Madame Gourier, the beautiful Léonore, who, during her last five years had remained an invalid in an arm-chair, afflicted with paralysis of the legs, but most devotedly nursed, her lover taking her husband's place to watch over her and read to her whenever the other was obliged to absent himself. It was, indeed, in Châtelard's arms that Léonore had suddenly expired one evening while he was helping her to drink a cupful of lime-water, whilst Gourier was outside smoking a cigar. When he came in again, the two men wept together for the dear departed. And nowadays they were inseparable, their duties leaving them plenty of leisure, for it was only in a theoretical kind of way that they now governed the town, the sub-prefect having prevailed on the mayor to follow his example, and let things take their own course, rather than spoil his life by trying to oppose the evolution, the progress of which nobody in the world could have prevented. Nevertheless, Gourier, who often felt afraid of the future, had some difficulty in taking this philosophical course. He had become reconciled to his son Achille, whom Ma-Bleue had presented with a very charming daughter, Léonie, who had the eyes of her beautiful mother, big blue eyes suggesting some large blue lake, some vast stretch of blue sky. Nearly twenty years of age at present, fit to be married, Léonie had captivated her grandfather. And he had resigned himself to opening his door to her parents, that son who had formerly rebelled against his authority, and that Ma-Bleue, of whom he still occasionally spoke as a savage. As he himself expressed it, it was hard for him, a mayor, the celebrant of lawful marriage, to receive at his fireside a couple of revolutionaries, who had simply espoused one another under the stars one warm summer's night. But the times were so strange, such extraordinary things happened, that a charming granddaughter become a very acceptable present, even although she were the offspring of impenitent free love. Châtelard had gaily insisted on reconciliation; and Gourier, since his son had been bringing Léonie to see him, had been more and more won over to the cause of La Crêcherie, though, to his thinking, it had hitherto remained a source of catastrophes.

Judge Gaume and Abbé Marle were late in arriving that day at the Mazelles', but the latter could not refrain from explaining their position to the sub-prefect and the mayor. Ought they to resign themselves to their daughter's unreasonable whim?

'As you will certainly understand, Monsieur le Sous-Préfet,' said Mazelle in an anxious but pompous manner, 'apart from the grief which such a marriage would cause us, we have to consider the deplorable effect which it would have socially, and our heavy responsibility towards distinguished persons of our class. We really seem to be going towards some abyss.'

They were seated in the warm shade, perfumed by the climbing roses, at a table with gay-coloured napery, on which stood several dishes of little cakes; and Châtelard, still a well-groomed, fine-looking man in spite of his years, smiled in a discreetly ironical manner. 'We are already in the abyss, dear Monsieur Mazelle,' he replied. 'It would be very wrong of you to put yourself out about the Government, the authorities, or even fine society, for only a semblance of these things now exists. I am still sub-prefect and my friend Gourier is still mayor, no doubt. Only we are scarcely more than shadows, and there is no longer any real, substantial State behind us. And it is the same with the powerful and the wealthy, a little of whose power and wealth is carried off each succeeding day by the new organisation of work. So don't take the trouble to defend them, particularly as they themselves, yielding to vertigo, are now becoming active artisans of the revolution. Don't resist then, yield to the current!'

He was fond of that style of jesting, which terrified the last _bourgeois_ of Beauclair. Moreover, it was an amiable and jocular way of telling the truth, for he indeed felt convinced that the old world was done for, and that a new one was springing from the ruins. Most serious events were taking place in Paris, the ancient edifice was falling stone by stone, giving place to a provisional structure, in which one could already plainly detect the outlines of the future city of justice and peace.

But the Mazelles had turned pale. Whilst the wife sank back in her armchair with her eyes fixed on the little cakes, the husband exclaimed: 'Really! do you think us threatened to such a point as that? I know very well that people think of reducing the interest on Rentes.'

'Rentes,' said Châtelard quietly, 'they will be suppressed before another twenty years have gone by; or, rather, some plan will be found for dispossessing the _rentiers_ by degrees. A scheme to that effect is already being studied.'

Madame Mazelle heaved such a desperate sigh that one might have imagined she was giving up the ghost. 'Oh, I hope we shall be dead by then!' said she; 'I hope that we shan't have the grief of witnessing such infamy! But our poor daughter will suffer by it, and that is an additional reason for compelling her to make a good marriage.'

But Châtelard pitilessly went on: 'Why, good marriages are no longer possible, since the right of inheritance is about to disappear. That is virtually resolved upon. In future each married couple will have to work out its own happiness. And whether your daughter Louise marries a _bourgeois'_ son or a workman's son, the capital of the newly-wedded pair will soon be identical--so much love, if they are lucky enough to love one another, and so much activity if they are intelligent enough not to be idlers.'

Deep silence fell, and one could hear the faint whirr of a warbler's wings, as it flew about among the roses.

'And so,' Mazelle, who was overwhelmed, ended by asking, 'that is the advice you give us, Monsieur le Sous-Préfet? According to you, we can accept that Lucien Bonnaire as our son-in-law, eh?'

'Oh, _mon Dieu_, yes! The world will none the less continue peacefully revolving. And as the two children are so fond of one another, it is at least certain that you will make them happy.'

Gourier had hitherto said nothing. He felt ill at ease at being called upon to decide such a question--he, whose son had gone off to live with Ma-Bleue, that wild girl of the rocks, whom he now received in his highly respectable middle-class home. At last an avowal of his embarrassment escaped him: 'That's true; the best thing after all is to marry them. When their parents don't marry them the young people take themselves off and get married as they fancy. Ah! in what times are we living!'

He raised his arms towards heaven, and Châtelard had to exercise all his influence to prevent him from falling into black melancholy. Gourier's old age--following on a somewhat dissolute life--was full of stupor; he constantly fell asleep, at table, in the midst of conversation, even whilst walking out of doors. With the resigned air of a once terrible employer of labour, whom facts had vanquished, he ended by saying: 'Well, what else can be expected? After us the deluge, as many of our class now say. We are done for.'

It was at this moment that Judge Gaume arrived, much behind his time. Nowadays his legs swelled, and it was only with difficulty that he could walk, helping himself along with a stick. He was nearly seventy, and was awaiting his pension, full of secret disgust for that human justice which he had administered during so many years, contenting himself the while with strictly applying the written law, like a priest who no longer believes, but is sustained solely by dogma. In his home, however, the drama of love and betrayal which had wrecked his life had pursued its course, stubbornly and pitilessly. The disaster, which had begun with the suicide of his wife, had been completed by his daughter Lucile, who had caused her husband, Captain Jollivet, to be killed in a murderous duel by one of her lovers, with whom she had afterwards eloped. The police were seeking her, and Gaume now lived alone with her one child, André, a delicate, affectionate youth of sixteen, over whom he watched with anxious affection. Sufficient misfortune had fallen, he felt; avenging destiny, punishing some old unknown crime, must go no further. Yet he still wondered to what good power, what future of true justice and faithful love he might guide that youth in order that his race might be renewed and at last win happiness.

On being questioned by Mazelle respecting the advisability of a marriage between Louise and Lucien Bonnaire, Judge Gaume immediately exclaimed: 'Marry them, marry them--particularly if they feel for one another such great love as to enter into contest with their parents and to pass over all obstacles. Love alone decides happiness.'

Then he regretted, like an avowal, that cry which the bitterness of his whole life had wrung from him, for he was intent on preserving during his last days his wonted mendacious rigidity of demeanour, his austerity and coldness of countenance. 'Do not wait for Abbé Marle,' he resumed. 'I met him just now, and he begged me to apologise to you. He was hastening to the church for the holy vessels, in order to take extreme unction to old Madame Jollivet, an aunt of my son-in-law's, who is in the last pangs. Poor Abbé, in her he is losing one of his last penitents; he had his eyes full of tears.'

'Oh! the fact that the clergy is being swept away is the one good feature of what is happening!' exclaimed Gourier, who had remained a devourer of priests. 'The republic would still be ours if the clergy had not tried to take it from us. It was they who urged the people on to upset everything and become the masters.'

But Châtelard remarked compassionately: 'Poor Abbé Marle! it grieves me to see him in his empty church. You do quite right, Madame Mazelle, in still sending him some bouquets for the Virgin.'

Silence fell again, and the tragic shadow of the priest seemed to flit by in the bright sunlight amidst the perfume of the roses. In Léonore he had lost his dearest and most faithful parishioner. Madame Mazelle doubtless remained to him, but she was not really a believer; all that she sought in religion was something ornamental--a kind of certificate that she was a right-minded _bourgeois_. And the Abbé was not ignorant of his destiny--he would some day be found dead at his altar under the remnants of his church, which threatened ruin, but which, for lack of money, he could not repair. Neither at the sub-prefecture nor at the town-hall was there any fund left for such work. He had appealed to the faithful, and in response had with difficulty obtained a ridiculously small sum of money. And now he was resigned to his fate; he awaited the fall, still celebrating the offices as if he were unaware of the threat of annihilation hanging above his head. His church was becoming emptier and emptier, dying a little more each day, and he would die also when the old structure cracked around him and fell crushing him beneath the weight of the great crucifix, which still hung from the wall. And they would have one and the same grave: the earth whither all returns.

As it happened Madame Mazelle was far too much upset by her personal worries to take any interest at that moment in the dolorous fate of Abbé Marle. If there should not be a prompt solution with respect to the marriage, she feared that she might fall seriously ill--she who had derived so many hours of nursing and petting from the malady without a name with which she had embellished her existence. All her guests having now arrived, she quitted her armchair to serve the tea, which steamed in the cups of bright porcelain, whilst a sunray gilded the little cakes lying in the crystal dishes. And she went on shaking her big, placid head, for she was not yet convinced: 'You may say what you like, my friends, but that marriage would really be the last blow, and I cannot make up my mind to it.'

'We will wait,' declared Mazelle; 'we will exhaust Louise's patience.'

But all at once both husband and wife were thunderstruck, for Louise herself stood before them among the sunlit roses at the entrance of the arbour. They had fancied her in her room, on her couch, suffering from that love-sickness which, according to Doctor Novarre, contentment alone could cure. No doubt she had guessed that the others were deciding her fate, and with her beautiful black hair just caught up in a knot, wearing a dressing-gown with a pattern of little red flowers, she had come down in all haste. Quivering with the passion that animated her, she looked charming with her somewhat obliquely-set eyes gleaming in her slender face. Not even grief could entirely extinguish their gay sparkle. She had heard the last words spoken by her parents. 'Ah, mamma! ah, papa! what was that you were saying?' she cried. 'Do you imagine that some merely childish caprice is in question? I've told you already, and I tell you again, I wish Lucien to be my husband, and so he shall!'

Although half-conquered by the sudden apparition of his daughter, Mazelle still tried to struggle against the inevitable. 'But just think of it, you unhappy child! Our fortune, which you were to have inherited, is already in jeopardy, so it is quite possible that one of these days you will find yourself without a penny,' he said.

'Just understand the situation,' remarked Madame Mazelle in her turn. 'With our money, even though it is in danger, you might still make a sensible marriage.'

Then Louise exploded with superb, joyous vehemence, 'Your money! I do not care a pin for it! You can keep it! If you were to give it me Lucien would no longer take me as his wife. Money, indeed! what should I do with it? Money! of what use is it? It does not help one to love and be happy. Lucien will earn my bread for me, and I'll earn it too if necessary. It will be delightful.'

She cried these things aloud with such strength of youth and hope that the Mazelles, fearing for her reason, were anxious to quiet her by at last yielding to her desires. Besides, they were not people to continue battling; they wished to end their days in peace. As for Sub-Prefect Châtelard, Mayor Gourier, and Judge Gaume, whilst drinking their tea they smiled with some embarrassment, for they felt the girl's free love sweeping them away like bits of straw. One must needs consent to what one cannot prevent.

It was Châtelard who summed up everything in his amiable, bantering way, the irony of which was scarcely perceptible. 'Our friend Gourier is right--we are done for, since it is our children who make the laws now.'

The marriage of Lucien Bonnaire and Louise Mazelle took place a month later. Châtelard for his personal amusement prevailed on his friend Gourier to give a grand ball at the town-hall on the wedding night, as if by way of honouring their friends the Mazelles. At heart he thought it a good joke to make the _bourgeoisie_ of Beauclair dance at this wedding, which became a symbol of the multitude's accession to power. They would dance on the ruins of authority in that town-hall which was gradually becoming the real common-house, where the mayor was no longer anything but a link between the various social groups. The hall was most luxuriously decorated, and there was music and singing as at the wedding of Nanet and Nise. And acclamations once more arose at the sight of the bridal pair, Lucien, so strong and sturdy, followed by all his mates of La Crêcherie, and Louise, so slim and passionate, followed by all the fine society of the town, whose presence had been desired by her parents as a kind of supreme protest. Only it came to pass that the fine folk were swamped by the multitude, won over to the rush of delight, carried away and conquered to such a point that a great many more marriages between the lads and girls of the different classes ensued. Once more, then, love triumphed, all-powerful love which inflames the living universe, and bears it onward to its happy destiny.

Youth flowered on all sides, other alliances were concluded, couples which everything seemed to separate set out together for the future city of happiness. The old trading class of Beauclair, now on the point of disappearing, gave its daughters and sons to the artisans of La Crêcherie and the peasants of Les Combettes. The Laboques set the example by allowing their son Auguste to marry Marthe Bourron, and their daughter Eulalie to marry Arsène Lenfant. They had ceased struggling for some years already, for they realised that the trade of old times, the useless cogwheel which had consumed so much energy and wealth, was vanquished and dying. At the outset they had been obliged to allow their shop of the Rue de Brias to be turned into a mere _dépôt_ of the articles manufactured at La Crêcherie and the other syndicated factories. Then, taking a further step, they had consented to close the shop, which had been merged into the general stores, where Luc's indulgence had procured them an inspectorship by way of occupation. And now old age had come, and they lived in retirement, full of bitterness, and scared by the sight of that new world which evinced none of their own passion for lucre. The new generations had grown up for other forms of activity and delight than moneymaking. And thus their children, Auguste and Eulalie, yielding to love, the great artisan of harmony and peace, married as they pleased, encountering no obstacle on their parents' side save the covert disapproval of old folk who regret the past. It was arranged that the two weddings should be celebrated on the same day at Les Combettes, now a large township, a very suburb of Beauclair, with large bright buildings redolent of the inexhaustible wealth of the earth. And the weddings took place at harvest-time--indeed, on the very last day of the harvesting, when huge ricks already arose upon every side over the great golden plain.

Feuillat, the former farmer of La Guerdache, had already married his son Léon to Eugénie, daughter of Yvonnot, the assessor, whom he had formerly reconciled with Feuillat, the mayor--that reconciliation whence had sprung the good agreement of all the inhabitants of the place, and that impulse to combine together which had made the wretched village, consumed by hatred, a fraternal and flourishing town. Nowadays Feuillat, who was very aged, had become like the patriarch of that agricultural society, for it was he who had dreamt of it, secretly sought to establish it, in former days, when combating the deadly tenant-farming system, and foreseeing what incalculable wealth the tillers of the soil might draw from it when they should agree together to love it like men of science and method. A true love for that soil which for centuries had been exhausting his ancestors, seemed to have sufficed to enlighten that simple farmer, who originally had been a hard-headed and rapacious man like all of his class. He had perceived in what direction lay salvation, peace among all the peasants, a combination of efforts, the earth becoming once more the sole mother, ploughed, sown, and cropped by one family. And he had beheld the fulfilment of his dream, he had seen his neighbours' fields joined together, the farm of La Guerdache merged into the parish of Les Combettes, other smaller villages joined thereto, a vast estate created, and set on the march for the conquest, by successive annexation, of the whole of the vast plain of La Roumagne. Feuillat, who had remained the soul of the association, formed with Lenfant and Yvonnot, its founders, a kind of 'Conseil des Anciens,' who were consulted on all things, and whose advice was always found profitable.

Thus, when the wedding of Lenfant's son Arsène with Eulalie Laboque was decided upon, and the latter's brother Auguste determined to celebrate his marriage with Marthe Bourron at the same time, it occurred to Feuillat, whose idea was accepted and acclaimed by all, to organise a great _fête_ which should be like the festival of the pacification and triumph of Les Combettes. They would drink to fraternity between the peasant and the industrial worker, formerly so bitterly opposed to one another, but whose alliance alone could establish social wealth and peace. They would drink also to the end of all antagonism, to the disappearance of that barbarous thing called trade which had perpetuated a hateful struggle between the dealer who sold a tool, the peasant who made corn grow, and the baker who sold bread, at a price increased by the thefts of a number of intermediaries. And what better day could be chosen to celebrate the reconciliation than that when the enemies of former days, the castes which had seemed bent on devouring and destroying one another, ended by exchanging their lads and girls, consenting to marriages which would hasten the advent of the future! Thus it was decided that the _fête_ should take place in a large field near the town, a field where lofty ricks, golden under the bright sun, arose like the symmetrically disposed columns of some gigantic temple. The colonnade stretched indeed to the very horizon; other ricks and other ricks arose, proclaiming the inexhaustible fruitfulness of the soil. And it was there that they sang, that they danced, amidst the pleasant odour of the ripe corn, amidst the great fertile plain, whence the work of man, now at last reconciled, drew bread enough for the happiness of all.

The Laboques brought in their train all the former tradesmen of Beauclair, whilst the Bourrons brought the whole of La Crêcherie. The Lenfants were there, at home, and never yet had folk fraternised so fully, the groups fast mingling and uniting in one sole family. The Laboques, no doubt, remained grave and somewhat embarrassed, but the Lenfants made merry with all their hearts, whilst the great sight of all was Babette Bourron, whose everlasting good humour, her certainty, even amidst the greatest worries, that things would turn out well at last, now proved triumphant. She personified hope, marching radiant behind the two bridal couples; and when these arrived--Marthe Bourron on the arm of Auguste Laboque, Eulalie Laboque on the arm of Arsène Lenfant--they brought with them such a blaze of youth and strength and delight, that endless acclamations rolled from one to the other end of the stubbles. The onlookers called to them affectionately, they were loved, they were praised because they indeed personified sovereign and victorious love, that love which had already drawn all those folk together, by giving them those overflowing harvests amidst which they would henceforth swarm like a free and united people, ignorant alike of hatred and of want.

That same day other marriages were decided upon, as had already happened at the wedding of Lucien Bonnaire and Louise Mazelle. Madame Mitaine, the former bakeress, who had remained for everybody the 'beautiful Madame Mitaine,' in spite of her sixty-five years, kissed Olympe Lenfant, sister to one of the bridegrooms, and told her that she would be happy to call her 'daughter,' for her son Évariste had confessed that he adored her. The beautiful bakeress's husband had been dead for ten years, and her establishment had been merged into the general stores of La Crêcherie, as was the case with most of the retail businesses of the town. She lived like a retired worker with her son Évariste, both very proud of the fact that Luc had given them the charge of the electrical kneading appliances, which yielded an abundance of white light bread. Whilst Évariste in his turn was bestowing a betrothal kiss on Olympe, who had turned pink with pleasure, Madame Mitaine suddenly recognised in a thin, dark little woman seated beside a rick, her old neighbour, Madame Dacheux, the butcher's wife. She thereupon went and sat down beside her. 'Must it not all finish in weddings,' she asked gaily, 'since all these young folk were ever playing together?'

Madame Dacheux, however, remained silent and gloomy. She also had lost her husband, who had died from the effects of a badly aimed blow with his chopper, which had struck off his right hand. According to some folk, clumsiness had nothing to do with it, the butcher having voluntarily cut off his hand in a fit of furious anger, rather than sign a transfer of his shop to La Crêcherie. Decent occurrences, and the idea that holy meat, the meat of the wealthy, was now being placed within the reach of all and appearing at the tables of the poorest, must have maddened that violent, reactionary, and tyrannical man. He had died from the effects of gangrene improperly treated, leaving his wife in a state of terror from the oaths which he had heaped upon her during his final agony.

'And your Julienne, how is she?' Madame Mitaine inquired in her amiable way. 'I met her the other day. She looked superb.'

The butcher's widow was at last obliged to answer. Pointing to a couple figuring in one of the quadrille sets, she said: 'She's dancing yonder. I'm watching her.'

Julienne indeed was dancing on the arm of a tall, good-looking fellow, Louis Fauchard, the son of the former drawer. Sturdy of build, white of skin, her whole face beaming with health, Julienne evidently enjoyed the embrace of that vigorous yet gentle-looking youth, who was one of the best smiths of La Crêcherie.

'Oh! does that mean another marriage, then?' asked Madame Mitaine, laughing.

But Madame Dacheux shuddered and protested: 'Oh! no, no! How can you say such a thing? You know what my husband's ideas were. He would rise from his tomb if I let our daughter marry that workman, the son of that wretched Mélanie, who was always trying to get a bit of soup-beef on credit, and whom he drove out of our shop so often because she never paid!'

In a low and tremulous voice the butcher's widow went on to relate what a torturing life she led. Her husband appeared to her at night-time. Although he was dead he still made her bow beneath his despotic authority, tormenting her, upbraiding her, frightening her with devilish threats in her dreams. The poor, scared, insignificant woman was so unlucky that even widowhood had not brought her peace.

'If I were to let Julienne marry contrary to his wishes,' she concluded, 'he would certainly come back every night to beat me!'

She was shedding tears now, and Madame Mitaine strove to comfort her, assuring her that she would soon get rid of her nightmares if she would only set a little happiness around her. Just then, as it happened, Mélanie, the ever-complaining Madame Fauchard, whom for years one had seen perpetually running about to procure the four quarts of wine which her husband required for his shift, drew near with a hesitating step. She no longer suffered from want. She occupied one of the bright little houses of La Crêcherie with Fauchard, who, infirm and stupefied, had now ceased all work. Lodging with her, moreover, was her brother Fortuné, now forty-five years of age, and already an old man, half-blind, and deaf, owing to the brutish, mechanical, uniform toil to which he had been condemned at the Abyss from his fifteenth year onward. Thus, in spite of the comforts which La Fauchard owed to the new pension and mutual relief system, she had remained a complaining creature, a wretched waif of the past, with two old children on her hands. Therein lay a lesson, an example of the shame and grief which the wage-system had brought with it.

'Have you seen my men?' she asked Madame Mitaine, referring to her husband and brother. 'I lost them in the crowd. Oh! there they are!'

With halting gait, arm-in-arm, by way of propping up each other, the brothers-in-law passed by--Fauchard, wrecked and done for, suggesting some ghost of the painful toil of the past; and Fortuné, looking less aged but quite as downcast, stricken seemingly with imbecility. Through all the sturdy crowd, overflowing with new life and hope amidst the sweet-smelling ricks, in which was piled the corn of a whole community, the two unfortunate men strolled hither and thither, freely displaying their decrepitude, understanding nothing of what went on around them, and not even acknowledging the salutations of acquaintances.

'Leave them in the sunshine--it does them good,' resumed Madame Mitaine, addressing La Fauchard. 'Your son is sturdy and gay enough!'

'That's true; Louis has the best of health,' the other replied. 'The sons are not much like the fathers, now that the times have changed. Just see how he dances! He will never know cold and hunger.'

Thereupon Madame Mitaine, in her good-natured way, resolved to promote the happiness of the young couple who were smiling at each other so lovingly whilst they danced before her. She brought the two mothers, Madame Fauchard and Madame Dacheux, together, and made them sit down side by side, and then she moved the butcher's widow and convinced her that she ought to consent to her daughter's marriage. It was solitude that made the poor old creature suffer; she needed grandchildren to climb up on her knees and put all troublesome phantoms to flight.

'Ah, _mon Dieu_!' she ended by exclaiming, 'I'm agreeable all the same, on condition that I'm not left alone. I myself never said no to anybody. It was _he_ who wouldn't have it. But if you all wish it, and promise to defend me, then do, do as you like.'

When Louis and Julienne learnt that their mothers consented to their wedding, they hastened to them and fell in their arms with tears and laughter. And thus amidst the general joy fresh joy was born.

'How could you think of parting these young people?' Madame Mitaine repeated; 'they seem to have grown up one for the other. I've given my Évariste to Olympe Lenfant, whom I remember as quite a little girl, when she used to come to my shop and my boy gave her cakes. It's the same with Louis Fauchard. How many times have I not seen him prowling near your shop, Madame Dacheux, and playing with your Julienne! The Laboques, the Bourrons, the Lenfants and the Yvonnots, whose marriages are now being celebrated, why, they all grew up together, at the very time when their parents were attacking one another, and now you see their harvest time has come.'

She laughed yet more loudly as she recalled the past, while an expression of infinite kindness spread over her face. And joy was rising around her. People came to say that other betrothals had just taken place--that of Sébastien Bourron with Agathe Fauchard, and that of Nicolas Yvonnot with Zoé Bonnaire. Love, sovereign love, was incessantly perfecting the reconciliation, blending all classes together. And the _fête_ lasted until night-time, until the stars came out, whilst love thus triumphed, bringing heart nearer to heart and merging one into another, amidst the dances and songs of those joyous people marching towards future unity and harmony.

Amidst the growing fraternity, however, there was one man, one of the old ones, Master-smelter Morfain, who remained apart from all the rest, mute and wild, unable and unwilling to understand. He still dwelt, like one of the prehistoric Vulcans, in the rocky cavity near the smeltery under his charge, and now he was quite alone there, like a _solitaire_ who had broken off all intercourse with the rising generations. When his daughter Ma-Bleue had gone off to realise her dream of love with Achille Gourier, the Prince Charming of her blue nights, Morfain had already felt that the new times were robbing him of the best part of himself. Then another love affair had carried away his son Petit-Da, that tall young fellow who had become so passionately enamoured of Honorine, a quick, alert little brunette, daughter of Caffiaux, the grocer and taverner. Morfain had at first peremptorily refused to consent to their marriage, full of contempt as he was for that shady family of poisoners, the Caffiaux, who on their side returned his disdain with interest, and in their vanity were by no means inclined to allow their daughter to marry a worker. Nevertheless, Caffiaux was the first to give way, for he was of a supple and crafty nature. After closing his tavern he had secured a very comfortable post as chief guardian at the general stores of La Crêcherie, and the nasty stories once told of him were being forgotten; whilst for his part he feigned too much devotion to the principles of solidarity to cling obstinately to a decision which might have harmed him. Thus Petit-Da, carried away by his passion, took no further notice of his father's opposition, and the result was that a terrible quarrel, a frightful rupture, between the two men ensued. From that time forward the master-smelter no longer spoke, save to direct the furnace work, but shut himself up in his cavern like some fierce and motionless spectre of the dead ages.

Though years and years went by Morfain did not appear to age. He was always the same old-time conqueror of fire, a colossus with a huge head, a nose like an eagle's beak, and flaming eyes set between cheeks which a flow of lava seemed to have ravaged. His twisted lips, now seldom parted, retained their tawny redness suggestive of burns. And it seemed as if no human considerations would again weigh with him in the depths of the implacable solitude in which he had shut himself on perceiving that his daughter and his son had joined the party of to-morrow. Ma-Bleue had presented Achille with a sweet little girl, Léonie, who was growing up all grace and tenderness. And Petit-Da's wife, Honorine, had given birth to a strong and charming boy, Raymond, now an intelligent young man who would soon be old enough to marry. But the children's grandfather did not soften--he repulsed them, shrank even from seeing them.

On the other hand, however, amidst the collapse of his affection for his kin, the species of paternal passion which he had always evinced for his furnace seemed to increase. That growling monster ever afire, whose flaming digestion he controlled both day and night, was seemingly regarded by him as some child. The slightest disturbance in its work threw him into anguish; he spent sleepless nights in watching over the working of the twyers, displaying all the devotion of a young lover amidst the embers whose heat his skin no longer feared. Luc, rendered anxious by Morfain's great age, had spoken of pensioning him off, but renounced the idea at the sight of the quivering rebellion, the inconsolable grief which was displayed by that hero of toil, who was so proud of having exhausted, consumed his muscles in pursuing the conquest of fire. However, the hour for retirement would come forcibly from the inevitable march of progress, and Luc indulgently decided to wait awhile.

Morfain had already felt that he was threatened. He was aware of the researches which Jordan was making with the view of replacing the old, slow, barbarous smeltery by batteries of electrical furnaces. The idea that one might extinguish and demolish the giant pile which flamed during seven and eight years at a stretch, quite distracted the master-smelter, and he became seriously alarmed when Jordan effected a first improvement by burning coal at the mouth of the pit from which it was extracted, and bringing electricity without loss to La Crêcherie by cable. However, as the cost price still remained too high for electricity to be employed for smelting ore, Morfain was able to rejoice over the futility of Jordan's victory. During the ensuing ten years each fresh defeat which fell on Jordan delighted him. He indulged in covert irony, feeling convinced that fire would never suffer itself to be conquered by that strange new power, that mysterious thunder, whose flashes were not even visible. He longed for his master's defeat, the annihilation of the new appliances which were ever being constructed and improved. But all at once the position became very threatening, a rumour spread that Jordan had at last completed his great work, having discovered a means of transforming calorical energy direct into electrical energy, without the help of mechanical energy being required. That is, the steam engine, that cumbersome and costly intermediary, was suppressed. And in thiswise the problem was solved, the cost of electricity would be lowered by one-half, and it would be possible to employ it for the smelting of ore. A first battery of electrical furnaces was indeed already being fitted up, and Morfain, full of despair, prowled fiercely around his blast-furnace, as if anxious to defend it.

Luc did not immediately give orders for its demolition. He wished first of all to make some conclusive experiments with the battery. Thus, during a period of six months, the work went on in both forms, and the old smelter spent some abominable days, for he now realised that the well-loved monster in his charge was condemned. He saw it forsaken now, nobody came up the hill to see it, whereas the inquisitive thronged around those electrical furnaces below, which occupied such little space, and did their work, it was said, so well and so speedily. Morfain, for his part, full of rancour, never went down to see them, but spoke of them disdainfully as of toys for children. Was it possible that the ancient method of smelting which had given man the empire of the world could be dethroned? No, no, one would have to revert to those giant furnaces which had burnt for centuries without ever being extinguished! And, alone with the few men under his orders, who remained silent like himself, Morfain looked down contemptuously on the shed in which the electrical furnaces were working, and still felt happy at night-time, when he was able to set the horizon all aglow with a 'run' of dazzling metal.

But the day at last came when Luc passed sentence on the blast-furnace, whose work was now shown to be both slower and more costly than the other. Thus it was decided that following upon a final run it should be allowed to go out, after which it might be demolished. Morfain, on being warned of this, did not answer, but remained impassive, his bronze countenance revealing nothing of the tempest in his soul. His calmness frightened people; Ma-Bleue came up to see him, accompanied by her daughter Léonie, and Petit-Da, moved by the same affectionate impulse, brought his son Raymond. For a moment the family found itself assembled, as in former days, in the rocky hillside cavern, and the old man allowed himself to be kissed and caressed, without repulsing his grandchildren as he had usually done. Still he did not return their caresses, but seemed far away, like one who belonged to a past period, one in whom no human feeling was left. It was a cold and gloomy autumn day, and the crapelike veil of the early twilight was falling from a livid sky over the dark earth. At last Morfain arose and broke the silence, saying, 'Well, they are waiting for me, there is yet another run.'

It was the last. They all followed him to the blast-furnace. The men under his orders were present, already shadowy in the increasing gloom, and once again, for the last time, the usual work was accomplished. A bar was thrust into the plug of refractory clay, the hole was enlarged, and finally the tumultuous flood of fusing metal poured forth, a stream of flames rolling along the channels in the sand and filling the moulds with blazing pools. And once again, too, from those tracks and fields of fire arose a harvest of sparks, blue sparks of delicate ethereality, and golden fusees delightfully refined, a florescence of cornflowers, as it were, amidst golden ears of wheat. And a blinding glow burst on the mournful twilight, illumining the furnace, the neighbouring buildings, the distant roofs of Beauclair, and the whole of the great horizon. Then everything disappeared, deep night reigned all around; the end had come, the furnace's life was over.

Morfain, who without a word had stood looking at it all, remained there in the gloom motionless like one of the neighbouring rocks which the shades of night again enveloped.

'Father,' said Ma-Bleue gently, 'now that there is no more work to be done here, you must come down to us. Your room has long been ready for you.'

And Petit-Da in his turn exclaimed: 'Father, you've certainly got to rest now. There is a room for you in my place too. You must let each of us have you in turn, you must live sometimes with one and sometimes with the other.'

But the old master-smelter did not immediately answer. A great sigh made his breast heave dolorously. At last he said: 'That's it, I'll go down, I'll have a look. But you can go away now.'

For another fifteen days it was impossible to induce Morfain to quit the furnace. He watched it cooling, as one watches beside a death-bed. Every evening he felt it in order to make sure that it was not quite dead. And as long as he found a little warmth remaining, he lingered obstinately beside it as if it were a friend whose remains it would be wrong to abandon. But at last the demolishers arrived, and then one morning the grand old vanquished man was seen to descend from his cavern to La Crêcherie, where he repaired with a still firm step to the large glazed shed in which the battery of electrical furnaces was working.

As it happened, both Jordan and Luc were there with Petit-Da, whom they had appointed to direct the smelting in conjunction with his son Raymond, the latter already being a good electrician. The work was being brought to greater precision day by day; and Jordan scarcely quitted the shed, eager as he was to perfect the new method which had cost him so many years of study and experiment.

'Ah! Morfain, my old friend!' he exclaimed joyously. 'So you've become sensible!'

The other's face, the colour of old iron, remained impassive, and he contented himself with replying: 'Yes, Monsieur Jordan, I wanted to see your machine.'

Luc, however, scrutinised him rather anxiously. He had given orders to have him watched, for he had learnt that he had been found leaning over the mouth of the blast furnace, when the latter was still full of glowing embers, like a man preparing to fling himself into that frightful hell. One of the smelters under his orders, however, had saved him from that death which he had contemplated, perchance as a last gift of his scorched frame to the monster, as though indeed he set his pride in dying by fire, after loving and serving it so faithfully for more than half a century.

'It is pleasant to find you still inquisitive at your age, my good Morfain,' said Luc, without taking his eyes from him. 'Now, just examine these toys.'

The battery stretched out before them, showing ten furnaces, ten cubes of red brick-work over six feet high and nearly five feet long. And above them one only saw the powerful electrodes, thick cylinders of carbon, to which the electric cables were attached. The operations were very simple. An endless screw, worked by a switch, served the ten furnaces, bringing the ore and discharging it into them. A second switch set up the current, the arc whose extraordinary temperature of two thousand degrees sufficed to melt almost four hundredweight of metal in five minutes. And it was only necessary to turn a third switch for the platinum door of each oven to rise up and for a kind of rolling way, lined with fine sand, to start off on the march and receive the ten pigs, each of four hundredweight, and carry them into the cool air outside.

'Well, my good Morfain,' asked Jordan with the gaiety of a happy child, 'what do you think of it?'

Then he told him of the output. Those toys, each yielding four hundredweight of metal every five minutes, could turn out altogether a total of two hundred and forty tons daily, if they were allowed to work ten hours at a stretch. This was a prodigious output when one considered that the old blast-furnace, burning day and night alike, could not supply one-third of the quantity. As a matter of fact the electrical furnaces were seldom kept working more than three or four hours, and the advantage was that they could be lighted and extinguished as one pleased, in accordance with one's needs, whatever quantity of raw material that was required being immediately obtained. And how easily they worked, and what cleanliness and simplicity there was! As the electrodes themselves supplied the carbon necessary for the carburisation of the ore, there was little dust. The gases alone escaped, and the quantity of slag was so small that a daily cleaning sufficed to get rid of it. There was no longer any need of a barbarous colossus whose digestion caused disquietude, nor of any of the numerous and cumbersome appendages, the purifiers, the heaters, the blast machinery, and the constant current of water, with which it had been necessary to surround it. There was no longer any fear of stoppages or cooling down, nor any talk of demolishing or emptying the monster whilst still ablaze, because a twyer simply went wrong. Loaders watching at the mouth, and smelters piercing the plug and broiling in the flames of the 'runs' were no longer required to be on the alert, following one another incessantly with day and night shifts. The battery of the ten electrical furnaces, extending over a surface under fifty feet in length and some sixteen feet in width, was at its ease in the large, bright, glazed shed which sheltered it. And three children would have sufficed to set everything going, one at the switch of the endless screw, a second at the switch of the electrodes, and a third at that of the rolling way.

'What do you think of it? What do you think of it, my good Morfain?' repeated Jordan triumphantly.

The old master-smelter still looked at the furnaces without moving or speaking. Night was already at hand, shadows were filling the shed, and the working of the battery, with its gentle mechanical regularity, was quite impressive. Cold and dim, the ten furnaces seemed to slumber, whilst the little cars of ore, moved by the endless screw, were emptied one by one. Then every five minutes the platinum doors opened, the ten white jets of the ten 'runs' blazed upon the gloom, and the ten pigs, flowery with cornflowers amidst ears of wheat, slowly and continuously journeyed off on the rolling way.

However, Petit-Da, who hitherto had remained silent, wished to give some explanations, and pointing to the thick cable which, descending from the rafters, brought the current to the furnaces, he said, 'You see, father, the electricity comes along that cable, and such is its force that if the wires were severed everything would be blown up!'

Luc, whom Morfain's calmness had reassured, began to laugh. 'Don't say that,' he exclaimed, 'you would frighten our young people. Nothing would be blown up. Only the imprudent man who touched the wires would be in danger. Besides, the cable is a strong one.'

'Yes, that's true,' Petit-Da resumed; 'a strong wrist would be needed to break it.'

Morfain, still impassive, drew near. To reach the cable he simply had to raise his hands. However, for a moment longer he remained there motionless, nothing on his scorched face revealing what his thoughts might be. But all at once such a flame shot from his eyes that Luc again felt anxious, as if with a vague presentiment of a catastrophe.

'A strong wrist, you say?' Morfain at last exclaimed, making up his mind to speak. 'Just let us see, my lad.'

And before the others had time to intervene he caught hold of the cable with his hands, hardened by fire and as strong as iron pincers. And he bent the cable and broke it, even as an irritated giant might break the string of some child's toy. And lightning came, the wires met, and a mighty dazzling flash burst forth. Then the whole shed was plunged into darkness, amidst which one heard nought but the fall of that tall, lightning-stricken old man, who dropped, all of a piece, like an oak felled in the forest.

Lanterns had to be fetched. Jordan and Luc, utterly distracted, could only pronounce Morfain to be dead, whilst Petit-Da shrieked aloud and wept. Stretched upon his back, the old smelter did not appear to have suffered. He lay there like some colossal figure of old iron. However, his garments were smouldering, and the fire had to be put out. Doubtless he had been unwilling to survive the well-loved monster, that blast-furnace of which he had been the last fervent worshipper. With him had finished the first battle: man, the subduer of fire, the conqueror of metals, bending beneath the slavery of dolorous toil, and so proud of that long and overwhelming labour--the labour of humanity marching towards future happiness--as to make it a title of nobility. He had even shrunk from knowing that new times were born, bringing to each by the victory of a just apportionment of work, a little rest, a little gaiety, a little happy enjoyment, such as hitherto only a few privileged beings had tasted, deriving it from the iniquitous suffering of the greater number. And he had fallen like some fierce, obstinate hero of the ancient and terrible _corvée_, like a Vulcan chained to his forge, a blind enemy of all that would have freed him, setting his glory in his servitude, and regarding the possible diminution of suffering and effort as mere downfall. And the force of the new age, the lightning which he had come to deny and insult, had annihilated him. And now he slept.

Three years later three more marriages took place, still further blending the classes together and tightening the bonds of that fraternal and peaceful people which was ever and ever spreading. Hilaire Froment, the eldest son of Luc and Josine, a strong young man already twenty-six, espoused Colette, the daughter of Nanet and Nise, a delightful little blonde in all the flowery springtide of her eighteen summers. And the blood of the Delaveaus became calmer on mingling with that of the Froments and Josine, the erstwhile wretched wanderer, who had been picked up, half dead of starvation, almost on the threshold of the Abyss. Then yet another Froment, Thérèse, the third-born, a tall, gay, good-looking girl, became when seventeen the wife of Raymond, son of Petit-Da and Honorine Caffiaux, her senior by two years. And this time the blood of the Froments was allied with that of those epic toilers the Morfains and that of the Caffiaux, the representatives of the old trade system, which the advent of La Crêcherie had swept away. Finally Léonie, the amiable daughter of Achille Gourier and Ma-Bleue, married one of Bonnaire's sons, who was twenty, like herself. This was Séverin, Lucien's younger brother; and in this marriage the expiring _bourgeoisie_ became united to the people, the resigned and mighty toilers of the dead ages, and the revolutionary workers who were attaining to freedom.

Great _fêtes_ were given, for the happy descendants of Luc and Josine were about to increase and multiply, helping to people the new city which Luc had founded in order that Josine and all others might be saved from iniquitous want. The torrent of Love was flowing forth, life was incessantly spreading, doubling the harvests, ever creating more and more men for increase of truth and increase of justice. Love the victorious, young and gay, bore couples, and families, and the whole town towards final harmony and happiness. Each marriage led to the building of another little house among the greenery; and the march of those houses never ceased. Old Beauclair had long since been invaded and swept away. The ancient leprous district, the filthy hovels where labour had agonised for centuries, had been razed to the ground, over which now stretched broad roads planted with trees and edged with smiling dwellings. Even the _bourgeois_ quarter of Beauclair was threatened; the piercing of new streets enabled one to enlarge and turn to other uses the old public edifices such as the sub-prefecture, the law courts, and the prison. The ancient church alone remained, cracking and crumbling in the centre of a small deserted square, which suggested a field of nettles and brambles. On all sides the old-time houses where people had lived cooped up in flats, had given place to healthier dwellings scattered through the huge garden, which Beauclair was becoming, each of them gay with light and with streaming water. And the city was founded, a very great and very glorious city, whose sunlit avenues ever stretched away, overflowing already into the neighbouring fields of the fertile Roumagne.

III.

Ten more years went by, and love which had united so many couples, victorious and fruitful love, brought each household a florescence of children, a new growth going towards the future. At each fresh generation a little more truth, justice, and peace would spread and reign throughout the world.

Luc, who was already sixty-five years old, evinced, with increasing age, a livelier, a keener affection for children. Now that he saw his long-dreamt-of city in being, his mind went out to the rising generations. To them he gave all his time with the thought that the future rested with them. Ripe men, who have long lived amidst certain beliefs and habits, and who perchance are chained to the past by atavism, cannot be altered; whereas children may be influenced, freed from false ideas, helped to grow and progress, in accordance with the natural inclination towards evolution which is within them.

Thus, during the visits which on two mornings every week Luc continued to pay to his work, he devoted most of his attention and time to the schools and the _crèches_ where the very little ones were kept. He began by inspecting them before proceeding to the workshops and the stores, and as he changed his visiting days every week, he generally took all the turbulent young people by surprise.

One Tuesday, a delightful morning in spring, he set out for the schools at about eight o'clock. The sunrays were scattering golden rain amidst the young greenery, and as Luc walked slowly down one of the avenues past the house where the Boisgelins resided, he heard a well-loved voice calling him. It was that of Suzanne, who, having seen him passing, had come to the garden-gate. 'Oh! pray come in for a moment, my friend,' said she. 'The poor man has another attack, and I feel very anxious.'

She was speaking of Boisgelin, her husband. As his idleness made him feel ill at ease in that busy hive, he had at one time tried to work, and Luc, at Suzanne's request, had given him a kind of inspectorship at the general stores. But the man who has never done anything, who has been an idler from birth, lacks will-power, and can no longer bend to rule or method. Thus Boisgelin soon found that he was incapable of following any continuous occupation. His mind fled, his limbs ceased to obey him, he became sleepy, overwhelmed. He suffered from his impotence and gradually relapsed into the emptiness of his former life, a succession of idle days, all spent in the most futile fashion. As there was no longer any round of pleasure and luxury to daze him he sank into increasing boredom, from which he could not be roused. He was spending his last years in a state of stupor, like a man who had fallen from another planet, amazed at the unexpected, extraordinary things which took place around him.

'Does he have any violent fits?' Luc inquired of Suzanne.

'Oh, no!' she replied. 'He simply remains very sombre and suspicious; but my anxiety comes from his insane fancies having taken hold of him again.'

It seemed indeed that Boisgelin's mind had been weakened by the idle life he led in that city of activity and work. From dawn till dusk he was to be seen wandering, like a pale, scared phantom, about the bustling streets, the buzzing schools, and the resounding workshops. He alone did nothing, whereas all the others busied themselves, overflowing with the delight and health which come from action. And, by degrees, as he found that he himself was the only one who did not work amidst that nation of workers, the insane idea seized upon him that he was the king, the master, and that this nation was a nation of slaves, working solely for his benefit, amassing incalculable wealth, which he would dispose of as he pleased for his sole enjoyment. Although olden society was crumbling to pieces, the capitalist idea had survived in him, and he remained the mad capitalist, the god-capitalist, who, possessing all the capital of the earth, had made all other men his slaves, the wretched artisans of his own egotistical happiness.

Luc found Boisgelin on the threshold of the house, dressed with all the care that he still evinced as regards his personal appearance. Even at seventy years of age he remained a vain-looking coxcomb, always well groomed, freshly shaved, and wearing that distinctive mark of conceit, a single eyeglass. His wavering glance and weak mouth alone revealed the collapse of his mind. At that moment he was about to go out, and a light cane was in his hand, and a shiny hat was tilted over his ear.

'What, already up! Already out and about!' exclaimed Luc, affecting a good-natured manner.

'Oh, it's necessary, my dear fellow,' replied Boisgelin, after giving him a suspicious glance. 'Everybody deceives me. How can I sleep in peace with all those millions which my money brings me in, and which this nation of workmen earns for me every day? I am obliged to see to things, for otherwise there would be a leakage of hundreds of thousands of francs every hour.'

Suzanne made a sign of despair, then addressing Luc she said: 'I was advising him not to go out to-day. What is the use of worrying like that.'

But her husband silenced her: 'It isn't merely to-day's money that worries me, there are all the sums piled up already--those milliards which fresh millions increase every evening. I quite lose myself among them; I no longer know how to live in the midst of such a colossal fortune. It is necessary that I should invest it, manage it, watch over it, in order to save myself from being robbed--is that not so? And, oh! it's hard work, terribly hard work, and makes me absolutely wretched--more wretched even than the poor who have neither fire nor bread.'

His voice had begun to tremble dolorously, and big tears rolled down his cheeks. He looked a pitiable object, and, although he generally annoyed Luc, who regarded him as an anomaly in that industrious city, the other was now stirred to the depths of his heart. 'Oh!' said he, 'you can at least take a day's rest. I'm of your wife's opinion. If I were you I shouldn't go out to-day, I should stop in my garden and watch my flowers bloom.'

But Boisgelin again scrutinised him and, as if yielding to a desire to confide in him, as in a safe friend, resumed: 'No, no, it is indispensable that I should go out. What bothers me even more than exercising supervision over my men and my fortune, is that I don't even know where to put my money. Just think of it! there are milliards and milliards! They end by becoming an encumbrance--no rooms are built big enough to hold them. And so it has occurred to me to have a look round and try to find some pit which might be deep enough. Only, don't say a word of it; nobody ought even to suspect it.'

Then as Luc, shuddering and terrified, turned towards Suzanne, who was very pale, and scarce able to restrain her tears, Boisgelin profited by the opportunity to slip out of the garden and go off. He could still walk rapidly, and, turning down the sunlit avenue, he speedily disappeared. Luc's first impulse was to run after him and bring him back by force.

'I assure you, my friend,' he said to Suzanne, 'that you act wrongly in letting him wander about; I can never meet him prowling around the schools or through the workshops and stores without fearing some disaster.'

However, Suzanne strove to reassure him. 'He is inoffensive, I am sure of it,' she said. 'True, I sometimes tremble for him, for he becomes so gloomy beneath the burden of all that imaginary money of his that a sudden impulse to have done with it all is to be feared. But how can I shut him up? He is only happy out of doors, and to place him in confinement would be useless cruelty, especially as he never even speaks to anybody, but remains as wild and as timid as a truant schoolboy.'

Then the tears, which she had been restraining, flowed forth. 'Ah! the unhappy man, he has caused me much suffering; but never before did I feel so grieved.'

On learning that Luc was going to the schools Suzanne resolved to accompany him. She also had aged; she was sixty-eight already. But she had remained healthy and active, ever desirous of showing her interest in others, and helping on good work. And since she had been living at La Crêcherie, and had had nothing more to do for her son Paul, who was now married and the father of several children, she had created a larger family for herself by becoming a teacher of _solfeggio_ and singing for some of the youngest pupils in the schools. This helped her to live happily. It delighted her to arouse the musical instinct in those little children. She herself was a good musician, but after all her ambition was not so much to impart exceptional science to them, as to render their singing natural, like that of the warblers of the woods. And she had obtained marvellous results--there was all the sonorous gaiety of an aviary in her class, and the young ones who left her hands afterwards filled the other classes, the workshops, and indeed the whole town, with perpetual mirthful melody.

'But you don't give your lesson to-day, do you?' Luc inquired.

'No, I only want to profit by the play-hour to make my little cherubs rehearse a chorus. But there are also some matters for me to consider with Sœurette and Josine.'

The three women had become great, and indeed inseparable, friends. Sœurette had retained the management of the central _crèche_, where she watched over the very little ones--the children still in their cradles and those who could scarcely walk. As for Josine, she directed the needlework and household lessons, turning all the girls who passed through the schools into good wives and mothers, well able to manage their homes. In addition, the three friends formed together a kind of council which looked into all important questions concerning women in the new city.

Luc and Suzanne, following the avenue, at last reached the large square where the common-house arose, surrounded by green lawns decked with shrubs and flower-beds. The building was not the modest pile of earlier years; in its stead there had been erected a perfect palace, with a long polychromatic façade, in which decorated stoneware and painted faïence were blended with ironwork. In the large halls erected for meetings, theatrical performances, spectacular displays, and games, the people found themselves at their ease, at home as it were. They frequently fraternised at the festivities which were interspersed among the days of work. If the little houses, where each lived as he listed, were modest ones, the common-house, on the contrary, displayed dazzling luxury and beauty, such as was appropriate for the sovereign abode of the people-king. The common-house even tended to become a town in the town, so frequently was it enlarged in accordance with increasing needs. Other buildings, too, arose behind it--libraries, laboratories, and lecture-halls, which facilitated free study, research, experiment, and the diffusion of the acquired truths. There were also courts and covered buildings for athletic exercises, without mentioning some admirable free baths, flooded with the fresh and pure water captured on the slopes of the Bleuse Mountains, that water to whose inexhaustible abundance the city owed its cleanliness, health, and gaiety. But the schools especially had become a little world by themselves, occupying a number of buildings near the common-house, for several thousand children now studied in them. To avoid all unhealthy crowding numerous divisions had been arranged, each occupying its own pavilions, whose large bay windows overlooked spacious gardens. Thus the whole formed, as it were, a city of childhood and youth, in which one found children of all ages, from infants still in their cradles to big lads and lassies who were completing their apprenticeships after passing through the five classes in which education proper was imparted to them.

'Oh!' said Luc, with his kindly smile, 'I always begin at the beginning; I always go first to see those little friends of mine who are still being suckled.'

'Well, of course,' replied Suzanne, smiling also. 'I will go in with you.'

In the first pavilion on the right-hand, amidst a garden planted with roses, Sœurette reigned over a hundred cradles and as many rolling-chairs. She also watched over some of the adjacent pavilions, but she invariably returned to this one, which sheltered three of Luc's granddaughters and one of his grandsons, of whom she was very fond. Luc and Josine, knowing how the city benefited by the rearing of the children together, had set an example in this respect, desiring that their own grandchildren should be brought up with those of others.

As it happened, Josine was in the pavilion with Sœurette that morning. The former was now fifty-eight, and the latter sixty-five years of age. But Josine retained her supple gracefulness and fair delicacy beneath her beautiful hair, whose golden hue had simply paled; whilst Sœurette, as often happens with plain, thin, dark women, did not appear to age, but seemed to acquire with advancing years a particular charm, derived from her active kindliness and persistent youth. Suzanne, now sixty-eight, was the elder of both of them; and all three surrounded Luc like a trio of faithful hearts, one the loving wife and the others devoted friends.

When Luc went in with Suzanne, Josine was holding on her knees a little boy scarcely two years old, whose right hand Sœurette was examining.

'Why, what is the matter with my little Olivier?' asked Luc, already feeling anxious. 'Has he hurt himself?'

The little fellow was his last-born grandson, Olivier Froment, the child of his eldest son Hilaire, and of Colette, the daughter of Nanet and Nise.

'Oh!' replied Sœurette, 'it is merely a splinter which must have come from the table of his chair. There, it's out now!'

The boy had raised a slight cry of pain and then had begun to laugh again; while a little girl, a four-year-old, who ran about in all freedom, hastened up with open arms as if to take hold of him and carry him off.

'Will you let him be, Mariette?' exclaimed Josine, full of alarm. 'One must not turn one's little brother into a doll.'

Mariette protested, declaring that she would be very good. And Josine, like a kind grandmother, already calmed, glanced at Luc, and the pair of them smiled, well pleased to see all those young folk who had sprung from their love around them. However, Suzanne was bringing them two other fair-headed little granddaughters, Hélène and Berthe, who were twins, in their fourth year. Their mother was Pauline, Luc's second daughter, now the wife of André Jollivet, who had been brought up by his grandfather Judge Gaume, after the captain's tragical death and Lucile's disappearance. Of their five children, Luc and Josine had already married three, Hilaire, Thérèse, and Pauline, whilst the two others, Charles and Jules, were as yet merely 'engaged.'

'And these darlings--you were forgetting them,' said Suzanne gaily.

Hélène and Berthe, the twins, threw their arms around the neck of their grandfather, of whom they were extremely fond; Mariette also tried to climb upon his knees, whilst little Olivier thrust out his hands, which no longer hurt him, and frantically implored grandpapa to take him on his shoulders. Luc, half stifled by caresses, began to jest:

'That's it, my friend, you have now only to fetch Maurice, your nightingale as you call him. Then there would be five of them to devour me. Good heavens! what shall I do when there are dozens?'

Then, setting the twins and Mariette on the floor, he took hold of Olivier and threw him up into the air, at which the child raised cries of rapturous delight.

'Come, be reasonable, all of you,' Luc resumed when he had set the boy on his chair again, 'one can't be always playing, you know; I must attend to the others.'

Guided by Sœurette and followed by Josine and Suzanne, he next went round the rooms. Those nurseries of the little folk were very charming with their white walls, their white cradles, their babes in white, a universal whiteness which seemed so gay in the sunshine which streamed through the lofty windows. Here also there was an abundance of water--one could feel its crystalline freshness, hear its murmur, as if indeed clear streams were flowing through the place, ensuring all the extreme cleanliness which was apparent on every side. Cries occasionally came from the cradles, but for the most part one only heard the pretty prattle, the silvery laughter of those who could already walk. Amongst them there was yet another little community, a silent community of toys, dolls, jumping-jacks, horses, and carts, all leading a naïve and comical existence. And these were the property of one and all, of both the boys and the girls who mingled like members of one sole family, growing up together from their cradles, and destined hereafter to live side by side, now as brothers and sisters, now as husbands and wives.

This practice of bringing up the children of both sexes together had already yielded good results. Among the young married couples Suzanne noticed a happy peacefulness, a closer blending of intelligence and sentiment, something resembling fraternity in love. And in the schools she observed that the presence of the sexes side by side aroused a new spirit of emulation, imparting gentleness to the boys, decision to the girls, and preparing both for a more perfect intermingling of natures, in such wise that they would become one joint spirit at the family hearth. Nothing of that which some had feared had taken place; on the contrary the moral level was higher than formerly, and it was wonderful to see those lads and girls seek the studies which might prove most useful to them, in accordance with the liberty which was granted to each pupil to work out his or her future in conformity with individual taste.

'They are virtually betrothed in their cradles,' said Suzanne jestingly, 'and divorce is done away with, for they know one another too well to select either wife or husband lightly. But come, my dear Luc, playtime has begun and I want you to hear my pupils sing.'

Sœurette remained with her little folk, for it was also the time when some of them took their baths, and Josine for her part had to go into her needlework ward, where several of the little girls preferred to spend their play-hour in learning to make dresses for their dolls. Thus Luc alone followed Suzanne down the covered gallery into which opened the five class-rooms.

It had long since been necessary to subdivide the classes, provide more spacious buildings, and even enlarge the dependencies, the gymnasiums, the apprenticeship workshops, and the gardens into which the children were turned in all liberty every two hours. After a few trials a definite system of education had been arrived at, and this system, which rendered study attractive by leaving the pupil all his personality, and only requiring of him attention to such lessons as he preferred, as he freely chose, yielded admirable results, providing the city each year with a new generation that tended more and more towards truth and justice. This was, indeed, the only good way to hasten the future, to create such men as might be entrusted with the realisation of to-morrow, free from all lying dogmas, reared amidst the necessary realities of life, and won over to proven scientific facts. And now that the new system worked so well nothing seemed more logical or more profitable than to abstain from bending a whole class beneath the rod of some master who would have tried to impose his personal views upon some fifty pupils of varying disposition and sensibility. It seemed indeed quite natural that one should simply awaken a desire to learn among those pupils, then direct them on their journey of discovery, and favour the individual faculties which each might display. The five classes had thus become experimental grounds, where the children gradually explored the field of human knowledge, not to devour that knowledge gluttonously without digesting any of it, but to awaken individual intellect, assimilate knowledge in accordance with personal comprehension, and in particular make sure of one's specialities.

Luc and Suzanne had to wait another moment for the school work to cease. From the covered gallery they were able to glance into the large class-rooms, where each pupil had his or her little table and chair. Long tables and forms had been discarded, and the new system made the pupil feel as if he were virtually his own master. But how gay was the sight of all these lads and girls mingled together promiscuously! And with what deep attention they listened to the professor who went from one to another, teaching in a conversational manner, and at times even provoking contradiction. As there were no longer any punishments or prizes the children set their budding desire for glory in competing together as to who could best show that he or she had understood some knotty point. It often happened that the professor ceased speaking to listen to those whom he guessed to be full of the subject, and the lesson then acquired all the interest of a discussion. Indeed one of the chief objects that the masters had in view was to put life into the studies, to draw the pupils from inanimate books, to make them cognisant of living things, and impart to them the passion of ideas. And pleasure was born of it all, the pleasure of learning and knowing; and through the five classes was spread the _ensemble_ of human knowledge, the real stirring drama of the world, which each of us ought to know, if he wishes to take part in it and find happiness in its midst.

But a joyous clamour arose, playtime had come round. Every two hours the gardens were invaded by a rush of boys and girls, fraternising together. A sturdy, good-looking lad, some nine years old, ran up and flung himself in Luc's arms, exclaiming: 'Good morning, grandfather.'

This was Maurice, the son of Thérèse Froment, who had married Raymond Morfain.

'Ah!' said Suzanne gaily, 'here's my nightingale! Come, children, shall we repeat our pretty chorus on that lawn between those big chestnut trees?'

Quite a band already surrounded her. Among a score of others there were two boys and a girl whom Luc kissed. Of the former one was Ludovic Boisgelin, a lad eleven years old, the son of Paul Boisgelin and Antoinette Bonnaire, whose marriage had first announced the fusion of the classes. Then there was Félicien Bonnaire, now fourteen, the son of Séverin Bonnaire and Léonie Gourier, the daughter of Achille and Ma-Bleue, whose love had flowered among the wild perfumed rocks of the Bleuse Mountains. And the girl was Germaine Yvonnot, a granddaughter of Auguste Laboque and Marthe Bourron. A handsome, dark-haired laughing girl she was, and in her one found blended the blood of workman, peasant, and petty trader, who had so long warred one against the other. It amused Luc to unravel the intricate skeins of those alliances, those frequent crossings of the race; and he was skilful in identifying the young faces, whose endless increase enraptured him.

But Suzanne spoke: 'You shall hear them,' she said; 'it is a hymn to the rising sun, a salute on the part of childhood to the planet which will ripen the crops.'

Some fifty children assembled together on the lawn amidst the chestnut trees. And the chant arose, very fresh, pure, and gay. There was no great musical science in it. It was merely a series of couplets, sung by a girl and a boy alternately, and emphasised by choral repetition. But it was so lively, so expressive of naïve faith in the planet of light and kindliness, that it possessed a stirring charm as sung by those young and somewhat shrill voices. For his part Maurice Morfain, the little boy who replied to Germaine Yvonnot, the girl, possessed, even as Suzanne had said, an angel voice of crystalline lightness, rising to the most delightful, high-toned, flute-like notes. And the chorus-singing suggested the warbling and chirruping of birds in freedom on the branches. Nothing could have been more amusing.

Luc laughed, like a well-pleased grandpapa, and Maurice, full of pride, again rushed into his arms.

'Why, it's true, my lad,' said Luc, 'you sing like a little nightingale! And do you know that is very nice, because in life, you see, you will be able to sing in your hours of worry, and your songs will bring back your courage. One ought never to weep, one ought always to sing.'

'That is what I tell them!' exclaimed Suzanne. Everybody ought to sing, and I teach them in order that they may sing here, and in studying, and in their workshops, and afterwards throughout their lives. The nation that sings is a nation of health and gaiety.'

She displayed no severity nor vanity in the lessons which she gave in this fashion amidst the garden greenery. Her only ambition was to open those young souls to the mirth of fraternal song and the clear beauty of harmony. As she expressed it, whenever the day of universal justice and peace should dawn, the whole happy city would sing beneath the sun.

'Come, my little friends,' she exclaimed, 'once again, and carefully, in time. There is no occasion to hurry.'

Once again the chant arose, but towards the finish of it the young vocalists were disturbed. A man appeared amidst some shrubbery behind the chestnut trees--a man who furtively turned round as if to hide himself. Luc, however, perceived that it was Boisgelin, and was greatly surprised by the maniac's strange behaviour; for he stooped and explored the grass as if seeking some hiding-place, some secret cavity. At last Luc understood the meaning of it. The poor fellow was looking for some nook where he might store away his incalculable wealth in order that it might not be stolen from him. He was often met behaving in this wild way, trembling with fear, at a loss where he might bury all that surplus fortune, the weight of which bowed him down. Luc shuddered with pity at the sight, and became yet more concerned when he perceived that the children were alarmed by the apparition, even like a party of gay chaffinches put to flight by the wild fluttering of some night-bird.

However, Suzanne, who had turned somewhat pale, repeated in a louder voice: 'Keep time, keep time, my dears! Bring out the last bar with all your fervour!'

Haggard and suspicious, Boisgelin had disappeared, like a black shadow vanishing from amidst the flowering shrubs. And as soon as the children, recovering their composure, had saluted the sovereign sun with a last joyful cry, Luc and Suzanne complimented them on their efforts and dismissed them to their play. Then they walked together towards the apprenticeship workshops on the other side of the garden.

'Did you see him?' Suzanne asked in a low voice, after a moment's silence. 'Ah! the unhappy man, how anxious he makes me!' But as Luc thereupon expressed his regret that he had been unable to follow Boisgelin and take him home again, she once more protested: 'Oh! he would not have followed you; you would have had to struggle with him, and there would have been quite a scandal. My only fear, I repeat it to you, is that he may be found some day in a pit with his head broken.'

They relapsed into silence, for they were now reaching the workshops. A good many pupils spent a part of their playtime there, planing wood, filing iron, sewing or embroidering, whilst others who reigned over a neighbouring strip of ground busied themselves with digging, sowing, and weeding. And now Luc and Suzanne again met Josine, standing in a large room where sewing, knitting, and weaving machines, placed side by side, were worked sometimes by girls and sometimes by boys. Here again several of the children were singing, and a joyous spirit of emulation seemed to animate the workshop.

'Do you hear them?' exclaimed Suzanne, whose gaiety had returned. 'They will always sing, those warblers of mine.'

Josine was explaining to a big girl of sixteen, named Clémentine Bourron, the manner in which she ought to manage a sewing-machine in order to do certain embroidery, whilst another pupil, a girl of nine, Aline Boisgelin by name, was waiting to be shown how she ought to turn down a seam. Clémentine was the daughter of Sébastien Bourron and Agathe Fauchard, her grandfather on her mother's side being Fauchard, the old drawer of the Abyss, and on her father's Bourron the puddler. Aline, who was a younger sister of Ludovic, the son of Paul Boisgelin and Antoinette Bonnaire, laughed affectionately when she perceived her grandmother, Suzanne, who was very fond of her.

'Oh, grandmamma!' said she, 'I can't turn my seams down very well as yet, but I sew them very straight--don't I, friend Josine?'

Suzanne kissed her, then watched Josine, who turned down a seam to serve as a pattern for the child. Luc himself took an interest in these little matters, aware as he was that everything has its importance, that happy life depends upon the happy employment of one's hours. Then, as Sœurette came up, at the moment when he was about to quit Josine and Suzanne in order to repair to the works, he found himself for a moment in the flower garden with the three women, those three loving and devoted hearts that helped him so powerfully to bring about the fulfilment of his dream of goodness and happiness. They surrounded him like symbols of the affectionate solidarity, the universal love which he wished to disseminate among mankind. Taking each other by the hand they stood there smiling at him, old no doubt, with their white hair, but still beautiful, with the wondrous beauty of kindliness. And when, after discussing some details of organisation with them, Luc departed, going towards the works, their loving eyes long followed his footsteps.

The factory halls and workshops, which were now much more extensive than formerly, were full of the healthy gaiety which comes from an abundance of sunshine and air. On all sides fresh water washed the cement pavement, carrying off the slightest particles of dust in such wise that the abode of work, once so grimy, muddy, and pestilential, now shone with cleanliness. Most of the work, too, was now performed by machines which stood around in serried array, like an army of docile, indefatigable artisans, ever ready for the effort required of them. If their metal arms wore out they simply had to be replaced. They themselves did not know what pain was, and they had in part suppressed human pain. They, too, were friendly machines, not the machines of the earlier days, the competitors which aggravated the workman's want by producing a fall in wages, but liberating machines, universal tools toiling for man whilst man rested. Around those sturdy workers, propelled by electricity, there were only so many drivers and watchers, whose sole duties consisted in moving levers or switches, and in making sure that the mechanism acted properly. The working day did not exceed four hours, and a workman never spent more than two upon one task, being relieved at the expiration of his two hours by a mate, whilst he himself passed to some other form of work, industrial art, agriculture, or public function. Again, the general employment of electric power had virtually done away with the uproar with which the workshops had once resounded, and now they were enlivened by the songs of the workmen, the vocal mirth which the latter had brought from their schools like a florescence of harmony embellishing their whole lives. And the singing of those men around that silent machinery, at once so powerful and so easy to manage, proclaimed the delight of just, glorious, and all-saving work.

As Luc passed through the hall containing the puddling furnaces, he paused for a moment to exchange a few friendly words with a strong young man of twenty or thereabouts, who managed one of those furnaces without any need of assistance.

'Well, Adolphe, are things going on satisfactorily, are you satisfied?' Luc inquired.

'Oh! certainly they are! I've just completed my two hours, and the "bloom" is just fit for removal.'

Adolphe was a son of Auguste Laboque and Marthe Bourron. Unlike his maternal grandfather, Bourron the puddler, who had now retired, he did not have to perform the terrible task of stirring the ball of fusing metal with a long bar amidst all the flaring of the fire. The stirring was now performed by mechanical means, and, indeed, an ingenious contrivance brought the dazzling ball out of the furnace and placed it on the chariot which carried it to the helve hammer without the workman having to intervene.

'You shall see,' Adolphe gaily resumed, 'it's of first-rate quality, and the work's so easy.'

He lowered a lever, a door opened, and the ball, like some planet, setting the horizon aglow with its luminous trail, slid down to the chariot, whilst the young man continued smiling, without a drop of perspiration appearing on his brow, his limbs remaining nimble and supple, undeformed by excessive toil. The chariot had already started off to deposit its burden under the hammer, one of a new pattern, worked by electricity, and doing everything that had to be done by itself, without need of any smith to turn the lump over, now upon this side and now upon that. And the hammer also worked so easily and the sound it gave out was so clear and light that it became like a musical accompaniment to the mirth of the workmen.

'I must make haste,' said Adolphe again, after washing his hands. 'I have to finish a table in which I'm greatly interested, and I shall do a couple of hours in the carpenters' workshop.'

He was indeed a carpenter as well as a puddler, having learnt various callings, like all the young folk of his age, in order that he might not be brutified by clinging to some particular specialty. Varied in this manner, work became both delight and recreation.

'Well, amuse yourself!' cried Luc, sharing his delight.

'Yes, yes, thanks, Monsieur Luc. That's the right thing to say--good work, good amusement.'

One spot where Luc spent a few enjoyable minutes on the mornings when he visited the works was the hall where the crucible furnaces were installed. He there felt himself to be far indeed from the old hall at the Abyss, that hall with its glowing pits growling like volcanoes, whence the wretched workers, amidst a blaze of fire, had to lift at arm's length their hundred pounds' weight of fusing metal. Instead of the old-time grimy, filthy place, there was now a spacious gallery, having broad windows through which the sunshine streamed, and a pavement of large slabs between which opened batteries of symmetrically disposed furnaces. As electricity was employed to work them they remained cold, silent, clean, and bright. And here again mechanical appliances performed all the work, lowered the crucibles, lifted them all aglow, and emptied them into moulds under the eyes of the men directing them. Women were even employed in this department, attending to the distribution of the electric power, for it had been noticed that they displayed more care and precision than men in working the delicate appliances.

Luc walked up to a tall and good-looking girl of twenty, Laure Fauchard, daughter of Louis Fauchard and Julienne Dacheux, who, standing near one apparatus, was carefully directing the current towards one of the furnaces in accordance with the indications of a young workman, who on his side watched the progress of the fusion.

'Well, Laure, you are not tired, are you?' Luc asked her.

'Oh! no, Monsieur Luc, it amuses me. How can I get tired from merely turning this little switch?'

The young workman, Hippolyte Mitaine, who was now nearly three-and-twenty, had drawn near. He was the son of Évariste Mitaine and Olympe Lenfant, and was reported to be betrothed to Laure Fauchard.

'Monsieur Luc,' said he, 'if you would like to see some billets cast we are ready.'

The machinery on being started quietly and easily removed the incandescent crucibles, and then emptied them into the moulds, which another mechanism brought forward in turn. In five minutes, whilst the young man and the girl looked on, the work was properly performed and the furnace was ready to receive yet another charge.

'There!' exclaimed Laure, laughing. 'When I think of all the terrible stories which my poor grandfather Fauchard used to tell me when I was a child I can hardly believe them. He hadn't got much of his wits left, and he related things about his old calling as a drawer that were fit to make one shudder. It was as if he had spent his life in the midst of a fire, with the flames licking his limbs. All the old folk think us very happy nowadays.'

Luc had become grave, and emotion moistened his eyes. 'Yes, yes,' said he, 'the grandfathers suffered a great deal. And that is why the grandchildren enjoy a better life. Work well, and love one another well, the lives of your sons and daughters will be better still.'

Then Luc resumed his round, and wherever he repaired throughout those spacious works he found the same healthy cleanliness, the same tuneful gaiety, the same easy and attractive work, thanks to the variety of the duties entrusted to the staff and the sovereign help of the machinery. The worker was no longer an overpowered beast of burden, held in contempt; with freedom he had recovered conscience and intelligence.

As Luc concluded his inspection in the hall where the rolling-machinery had its place, near the puddling furnaces, he again paused to say a few friendly words to a young man, about twenty-six years of age, who was just arriving.

'Yes, Monsieur Luc,' was the reply, 'I've come from Les Combettes, where I've been helping my father. There was some sowing to finish, so I did two hours at it over yonder. And now I mean to do another two hours here, for there is an urgent order for some rails.'

The young man was named Alexandre, and was a son of Léon Feuillat and Eugénie Yvonnot. Gifted with a lively fancy, he amused himself after completing his regular four-hours' work by preparing ornamental designs for Lange the potter.

However, he had already set himself to his task, which was the superintendence of a train of rollers for the making of rails. Luc, who felt very happy, looked on in a kindly way. Since electrical force had been employed the terrible uproar of the machinery had ceased; one only heard the silvery ring of each rail as it spurted forth, following those which were cooling. 'Twas all the good and constant production of an epoch of peace, rails and yet more rails, in order that every frontier might be crossed, and that the nations, drawn closer and closer together, might become but one sole nation, spread over the surface of the earth, which was becoming a perfect network of roads. And in addition to the rails there were the great steel ships--not the hateful vessels of war, carrying devastation and death across the ocean, but vessels of solidarity and brotherliness, enabling continents to exchange their products, and helping on the increase of mankind's fortune to such a degree that prodigious abundance reigned everywhere. And there were also the bridges facilitating communication, and the girders and all the structural materials for the erection of the innumerable edifices which the reconciled communities needed for their public life, the common-houses, the libraries, the museums, the asylums for infancy and old age, the huge general stores and the granaries, all vast enough for the life and keep of the federated nations. And finally, there were the innumerable machines and appliances which upon all sides and in all forms of labour replaced the arms of men: those which tilled the soil, those which toiled in the workshops, those which travelled along the roads, athwart the waves and through the sky. And Luc rejoiced that all that iron and steel should have become pacific, that the metal of conquest which mankind had so long employed solely to make the swords and spears that it needed for its bloodthirsty struggles, which it had afterwards turned into the guns and shells of its latter days of carnage, should be used, now that peace was won, solely for the erection of its city of fraternity, justice, and happiness.

Before returning home that day Luc desired to give a last glance at the battery of electrical furnaces which had replaced Morfain's smeltery. The battery, as it happened, was then at work, amidst a blaze of sunshine which filled the glazed shed where it was placed. Every five minutes the mechanism charged the furnaces afresh, after the rolling way had carried off the ten pigs whose glow was dimmed by the bright light of the planet. And here again, watching over the electrical appliances, there were two girls each about twenty, one of them a charming blonde, Claudine, the daughter of Lucien Bonnaire and Louise Mazelle, and the other a superb brunette, Céline, the daughter of Arsène Lenfant and Eulalie Laboque. As it was needful that they should give all their attention to switching the current on and off, they were at first only able to smile at Luc. But a short rest ensued, and on perceiving a group of children who stood inquisitively on the threshold of the shed, they came forward.

'Good-day, my little Maurice! Good-day, my little Ludovic! Good-day, my little Aline! Are lessons over, since you have come to see us?'

It should be mentioned that the children by way of recreation, and in the idea that they would acquire some first notions of various forms of work, were allowed to run about the place in comparative freedom. Luc, well pleased at seeing his grandson Maurice again, made the whole party enter the shed. And he answered their numerous questions, and explained the mechanism of the furnaces, and even made the appliances work again by way of showing the children how it sufficed for Claudine or Céline to turn a little lever, in order to fuse the metal and enable it to flow forth in a dazzling stream.

But Maurice, with all the importance of a little man who, though only nine years old had already learnt a great many things, exclaimed 'Oh! I know, I've already seen it. Grandfather Morfain showed me everything one day. But tell me, grandfather Froment, is it true that there used to be furnaces as high as mountains, and that one had to burn one's face day and night in order to get anything out of them?'

The others all began to laugh at this, and it was Claudine who answered: 'Of course there were! Grandfather Bonnaire has often told me of it, and you, Maurice, ought to know the story, for your great-grandfather--the great Morfain as he is still called--was the last to wrestle with fire like a hero. He lived up yonder in a cavern in the rocks, and never came down to the town, but from one end of the year to the other watched over his gigantic furnace, the monster whose ruins one can still see on the mountain-side, like those of some storm-rent castle-keep of the ancient days.'

Maurice's eyes dilated with astonishment, and he listened with all the passionate interest of a child to whom some prodigious fairy-tale is being told. 'Oh! I know, I know! Grandfather Morfain told me all about his father and the furnace as high as a mountain. But, all the same, I thought he was inventing it just to amuse us, for he does invent stories when he wants to make us laugh. And so it's true?'

'Why yes, it's true!' Claudine continued. 'Up above there were workmen who loaded the furnace, by emptying into it truck-loads of ore and coal, and down below there were other workmen ever on the watch, ever nursing the monster so that it might not have an attack of indigestion which would have prevented the work from being properly performed.'

'And that lasted seven and eight years at a stretch,' said Céline, the other young woman; 'the monster remained alight all that time, always flaming like a crater, without it being possible for one to let it cool, for if it did cool, there was a great loss, it had to be broken open, and cleaned, and almost entirely rebuilt.'

Then Claudine resumed: 'So you see, my little Maurice, your great-grandfather Morfain had a vast deal of work to do, since he could hardly quit that fire for a moment during seven or eight years; besides which, every five hours, he had to clear the tap-hole with an iron bar, in order to release the smelted ore, which ran out like a perfect river of flames, hot enough to roast one, as if one were a duck on the spit.'

At this the hitherto stupefied children burst into loud laughter. Oh! the idea of it, a duck on the spit, Old Morfain roasting like a duck!

'Ah well!' said Ludovic Boisgelin, 'it can't have been very amusing to work in those days. It must have given one too much trouble.'

'Of course,' his sister Aline exclaimed, 'I'm glad that I was born after all that, for it's very amusing to work nowadays.'

Maurice, however, had become serious and thoughtful, turning over in his mind all the incredible things which had been told him. And by way of summing up everything, he ended by saying: 'All the same, grandfather's father must have been awfully strong, and if things go better nowadays it is perhaps because he had such a lot of trouble formerly.'

Luc, who hitherto had contented himself with smiling, was delighted by this remark. He caught up Maurice and kissed him on both cheeks. 'You are right, my boy,' said he. 'And in the same way, if you work with all your heart nowadays, your great-grandchildren will be yet happier than you are--even now, you see, one no longer roasts like a duck.'

By his orders the battery of electrical furnaces was started once more, Claudine and Céline turning the current on or off by a simple gesture. The children wished to direct the mechanism themselves, and how delightful did that easy work seem after the legend-like narrative of Morfain's hard toil--the toil, it seemed, of some pain-racked giant living in a world that had disappeared!

All at once, however, there came an apparition, and the children, perturbed by it, ran off. Then Luc again perceived Boisgelin, who this time stood at one of the doorways of the shed, watching the work in an angry, mistrustful way, like some master who is for ever afraid that his men may rob him. He was often to be seen in this fashion in one or another part of the works, distracted by the idea that the place was too vast to be properly inspected by him, and maddened more and more by the thought of all the millions that he must every day be losing through his inability to check the work of all those people who were earning milliards for him. They were too numerous, he was never able to see them all. He looked so haggard, so exhausted by his fruitless roaming through the workshops, that Luc, stirred by pity, this time wished to join him, calm him, and lead him gently home. But Boisgelin was on his guard, and springing back, ran off towards the large workshops.

His morning ramble over, Luc now returned home, and just as the daylight was waning in the afternoon, after glancing round the general stores, he went to spend an hour with the Jordans. In the little drawing-room overlooking the park he found Sœurette chatting with schoolmaster Hermeline and Abbé Marle; whilst Jordan, stretched on a sofa and wrapped in a rug, remained thinking, according to his wont, with his eyes fixed upon the setting sun. Amiable Doctor Novarre had lately been carried off after an illness of a few hours, his only regret being that he would not behold the realisation of so many beautiful things in the possibility of which he had at the outset scarcely believed. Thus Sœurette nowadays received but the schoolmaster and the priest, and these only called at long intervals, when yielding to their old habit of meeting at her house. Hermeline, now seventy years of age and retired, was ending his days in a state of growing bitterness and anger against all that passed before him. He had reached such a point in this respect that he reproached the old priest with lack of warmth. As a matter of fact Abbé Marle, who was five years older than the other, sought refuge in dolorous dignity, silence which became more and more haughty as he beheld his church becoming empty and his religion expiring.

As Luc entered and took a chair beside Sœurette, who sat there silent, gentle, and patient, it so happened that the schoolmaster was again badgering the priest, like the sectarian and dictatorial republican that he still was. 'Come, come, abbé,' he said, 'since I fall in with your views you ought to help me. This is surely the end of the world. Children's passions, evil growths which we the educators were formerly appointed to crush, are nowadays cultivated, it seems. How is it possible for the State to have any disciplined citizens reared for its service when a free rein is given to anarchical individuality? If we, the men of method and sense, don't manage to save the Republic, it is surely lost!'

Since the day when he had thus begun to speak of saving the Republic from those whom he called the Socialists and the Anarchists, he had gone over to the side of reaction, joining the priest in his hatred of all who dared to free themselves otherwise than by his own narrow Jacobin formula.

And he went on yet more violently: 'I tell you, abbé, that your church will be swept away if you do not defend it! Your religion, no doubt, was never mine. But I have always admitted the necessity of a religion for the people; and Catholicism was certainly an admirable governing machine. So stir yourself! We are with you, and we will have an explanation afterwards, when we have re-conquered the lost ground together.'

At first Abbé Marle simply shook his head. As a rule nowadays he did not take the trouble to answer or get angry. At last he slowly said: 'I do the whole of my duty--I am at my altar every morning, even when my church is empty, and I implore God to perform a miracle. He will surely do so, if He deems it necessary.'

This brought the old schoolmaster's exasperation to a climax. 'Pooh! one must help oneself! It is cowardly to do nothing.'

Sœurette, smiling and full of tolerance for those vanquished men, thereupon thought it necessary to intervene: 'If the good doctor was still here,' said she, 'he would beg you not to agree so well together, since your seeming agreement only makes your quarrel worse. You grieve me, my friends; I should have been so happy--not to convert you to our ideas, but to see you admit, by virtue of experience, a little of all the good which our ideas have effected in this region.'

They had both retained great deference for Sœurette, and indeed their presence in that little drawing-room, beside the very hearth, so to say, of the new city, showed what ascendancy she still exercised over them. For her sake they even put up with the presence of Luc, their victorious adversary, though he, it should be admitted, discreetly avoided all appearance of triumphing over them. Thus, on this occasion, he refrained from intervening, however furiously Hermeline might deny all that he had created. After all, thought Luc, this was simply the last revolt of the principle of authority against the liberation of man both naturally and socially. On seeing the nations so near the point of escaping from civil as well as religious servitude, the once all-powerful State and the once all-powerful Church, which had voraciously contended for possession of them, now tried to come to an agreement, and league themselves together in order to reconquer the nations.

'Ah!' cried Hermeline again, 'if you own yourself beaten, abbé, it must be all over. In that case I can only keep silent as you do, and withdraw into my corner to die.'

The priest once more shook his head, preserving silence. But eventually, for the last time, he said: 'God cannot be beaten; it is for God Himself to act.'

The night was now slowly falling over the park, lengthening shadows were filling the little _salon_, and nobody spoke any further. Only a great quiver, coming from the melancholy past, swept through the room. Finally the schoolmaster rose and took his leave. Then, as the priest was about to do the same, Sœurette wished to slip into his hand the sum which at each recurring visit she had been accustomed to give him for his poor. This time, however, he refused the alms which he had been accepting so regularly for more than forty years; and in a low voice he slowly said: 'No, thank you, mademoiselle; keep that money. I should not know what to do with it; there are no more poor!'

Ah! what words those were for Luc: 'No more poor!' His heart had leapt as he heard them. No more poor, no more starvelings in that town of Beauclair, which he had known so black, so wretched, peopled by such an accursed race of famished toilers! Would all the frightful sores which had come from the wage-system be healed then? would shame and crime soon disappear, even as want did? The reorganisation of work in accordance with justice had sufficed already to bring about a better apportionment of wealth. And thus, when work should on all sides become honour and health and joy, an entirely peaceful and a brotherly race would assuredly people the happy city.

Jordan, who still lay upon the sofa, wrapped in his rug, had hitherto remained motionless, his eyes fixed upon space, through which no doubt his mind was roaming. At last, Abbé Marle and Hermeline having departed, he woke up, and without taking his eyes off the sunset which he seemed to be watching with passionate interest, he said in a dreamy manner: 'Each time that I see the sun set I become dreadfully sad and anxious. Suppose it were not to come back, suppose it were never to rise again over the black and frost-bound earth, what a terrible death would then overtake all life! The sun is the father, the fructifier, without whom all germs would wither or rot. And it is in the sun that we must place our hope of relief and future happiness, for if it were not to help us life would some day dry up.'

Luc had begun to smile. He knew that Jordan, in spite of his great age--he was now nearly seventy-five--had for some years been studying the problem of how he might capture solar heat and store it in vast reservoirs in order to distribute it afterwards as the one, great, eternal, living force. A time would come when the coal in the mines would be exhausted, and where would one then find the necessary energy for the torrent of electricity which had become so needful for life? Thanks to his first discoveries, Jordan had succeeded in supplying an abundance of electrical force for next to nothing. But what a victory it would be if he should succeed in making the sun the universal motor--if he should be able to take from it direct the caloric power which was now found slumbering in coal--if he should manage to employ it as the one sole fructifier, the very father of immortal life! He had but a last discovery to effect, and then his work would be accomplished and he would be ready to die.

'Don't alarm yourself!' said Luc gaily, 'the sun will rise to-morrow and you will succeed at last in snatching the sacred fire from it.'

However, Sœurette, whom the evening breeze now coming in cool gusts through the open window rendered somewhat anxious, stepped forward to ask her brother: 'Don't you feel cold? Wouldn't you like me to shut the window?'

He declined the offer with a motion of his hand, and all that he would allow was that she should wrap him round with the rug to his very chin. He now seemed to live solely by a miracle, solely because he wished to live, having adjourned death until the evening of his last day of work, the triumphant evening when, his task accomplished, he might at last sink into the good sleep of a loyal and contented worker. His sister surrounded him with greater precautions than ever; her extreme care prolonged his strength, and still gave him two hours of physical and intellectual energy each day--two hours which by force of method he put to wonderful use. And thus that poor, old, puny being, whom the slightest draught threatened with annihilation, was completing the conquest of the world simply because he was still a stubborn worker, one who did not throw his task aside.

'You will live to be a hundred years old!' said Luc, with an affectionate laugh.

At this Jordan likewise made merry. 'No doubt,' said he, 'if a hundred years prove necessary.'

Again deep silence fell in the little _salon_, full of such affectionate intimacy. It was delightful to see the warm twilight stealing slowly over the park, whose deep paths were gradually steeped in the gloom. Vague gleams still hovered just above the lawns, whilst the great trees faded away and became like light and quivering apparitions in the blue distance. And it was now the sweethearts' hour--the sweethearts to whom the park of La Crêcherie remained open, and who therefore came thither in the twilight after their daily work. Nobody troubled about the roaming, shadowy couples, who, holding one another by the hand, gradually melted away and disappeared amidst the greenery. They were confided to the keeping of the friendly old oaks. Reliance was placed on the freedom to love that was granted them, for this would render them gentle and chaste, like future spouses whose embrace becomes an indissoluble tie if mutually desired. To love always one need only know why and how one loves. Those who choose one another, knowing and consenting, never part. And already, along the dim avenues, over the lawns where the shadows stretched, there came sauntering couples, who peopled, as with apparitions, the mysterious gloom amidst the quiver of delight which the fresh odours of spring brought from the earth.

As other couples arrived Luc recognised among them several of the lads and girls whom he had seen in the workshops that morning. Were not yonder shadowy forms, so close one to the other that they seemed carried by one and the same flight over the tips of the grass, those of Adolphe Laboque and Germaine Yvonnot? And those others, whose hair mingled, their heads resting one against the other, were they not Hippolyte Mitaine and Laure Fauchard? And those others too, whose arms were tightly clasped around each other's waist, were they not Alexandre Feuillat and Clémence Bourron? Yet softer emotion came to Luc's heart when he fancied that he recognised his son Charles with his arm around the dark-haired Céline Lenfant, and his son Jules leading away in his embrace the fair Claudine Bonnaire. Ah! the young folk, the messengers of the new springtide, the last to awaken to love, to feel kindling within them the glow of life which the generations transmit one to the other! As yet they knew but the chaste quiver which comes at the first whispered words, and the innocent caress, the clasp in which ignorant hearts seek one another, and the furtive kiss whose sweetness suffices to open the portals of heaven. But before long the sovereign flame would unite and blend them in order that yet other artisans of love might spring from them, other couples, who in years to come would repair to this same park to exchange the vows of budding affection. For there would ever be more and more happiness and more and more free passion tending to increase of harmony. Even now other couples, and others still, were arriving, the park was gradually becoming populous with all the sweethearts of the happy city. This was the exquisite evening after the good day of work, the gloaming spent amidst lawn and cover, shadowy like dreamland, steeped in mystery and perfume, with nought breaking upon the silence save light sounds of laughter and kisses.

All at once, however, a shadowy form stopped outside the _salon_. It was Suzanne, who had anxiously been seeking Luc. And on finding him there she told him how greatly she was worried by Boisgelin's prolonged absence, for he had not yet returned home. Never before had he lingered like this out of doors after nightfall.

'You were right,' she repeated; 'I did wrong in leaving him to his mad fancies. Ah! the unhappy man, the poor old child!'

Luc, who shared her fears, bade her go home again. 'He may return at any moment,' he said; 'it is best that you should be there. For my part I will have a look round and bring you tidings.'

He at once took two men with him and crossed the park, with the intention of beginning the search among the workshops. But he had scarcely taken three hundred steps, and was near the little lake, fringed with willows, quite a nook of paradise, when he halted on hearing a light cry of terror which came from an adjacent clump of greenery. From amidst that foliage there ran a pair of frightened lovers, who he fancied were his son Jules and the fair Claudine Bonnaire. 'What is the matter? What has alarmed you?' he called.

But they did not answer, they fled as beneath a blast of terror, like love birds whose caresses have been disturbed by some frightful encounter. And when Luc himself decided to enter the copse, he also gave vent to an exclamation of horror. For he had almost knocked against a body which hung from a branch there, blocking the narrow pathway. In the last gleam of light falling from the sky where the stars were now appearing Luc recognised the body as that of Boisgelin.

'Ah! the unhappy man, the poor old child!' he murmured, repeating Suzanne's words, and feeling quite upset by that horrible tragedy which would cause her such deep grief.

With the help of his companions he cut down the body and laid it on the ground. But it was already quite cold. The unhappy man must have hanged himself there early in the afternoon, after his desperate ramble through the busy works. Luc fancied that he could divine everything when at the foot of the tree he noticed a large hole which Boisgelin had apparently dug with his hands, a hole in which he had no doubt meant to bury the prodigious fortune which his people of workers earned for him, that fortune which he knew not how to manage or how to store away. And despairing, perchance, of his power to make a pit of sufficient size for so much wealth, he had ended by resolving to die there and thus rid himself of the horrible embarrassment in which he was placed by his ever-growing and crushing fortune. His day of wild roaming, his madness, his inability to live, idler that he was, in the new city of just work, had culminated in that tragic death, and he had hung there whilst the park, in the clasp of warm and nuptial night, was filled with the rustling of caresses and the whispering of loving vows.

In order to avoid frightening the shadowy couples gliding between the trees around him, Luc at once sent the two men to fetch a stretcher at La Crêcherie, at the same time begging them to tell nobody of the lugubrious discovery. And when they had returned and laid the lifeless body between the little curtains of grey canvas, the mournful _cortège_ set off along the blackest of the paths in order to escape observation. In this wise death, frightful death, passed along silently, steeped in shadows, through the delightful awakening of spring, now all a-quiver with new life. Lovers seemed to arise on all sides, springing up at the bends of each avenue, in the recesses of each clump of bushes. A perfume of flowers made the air quite balmy, hands sought hands, and lips met. Love was budding, a fresh wave was coming to increase humanity's broad stream, death was incessantly vanquished, to-morrow and to-morrow were ever sprouting in order that there might be yet more truth, more justice, more happiness in the world.

Suzanne stood waiting in a state of anguish, at the door of the house, her eyes gazing into the night. When she perceived the stretcher she understood, and gave vent to a low moan. And when Luc in a few words had acquainted her with the wretched end of the useless being now slumbering there, she was only able to repeat, as she thought of that empty, poisoned, and poisonous life which had brought her so much suffering: 'Ah, the unhappy man, the poor old child!'

Other catastrophes took place amidst the crumbling of the rotten society of the old days now fated to disappear. But the greatest stir of all was caused by one that occurred during the ensuing month--the collapse of the old church of Saint Vincent one bright sunshiny morning when Abbé Marle was at the altar celebrating mass solely for the sparrows which flew through the deserted nave.

The priest had long been aware that his church would some day fall upon him. It dated from the sixteenth century, and was in a very damaged condition, cracking upon all sides. The steeple had certainly been repaired some forty years previously, but from lack of funds it had been necessary to postpone all work on the roofing, whose beams, half eaten away, were already yielding. And since that time every application for a grant had been made in vain. The State, overburdened with debts, abandoned that church of a remote region. The town of Beauclair refused to contribute anything, Mayor Gourier having never been on the side of the priests. Thus Abbé Marle, reduced to his own resources, had been obliged to seek among the faithful the large sum which became more and more urgently required if the edifice was not to fall upon his shoulders. But in vain did he knock at the doors of wealthy parishioners, the faithful were dwindling away, their zeal was fast cooling. During the lifetime of the beautiful Léonore, the mayor's wife, whose extreme piety proved some compensation for her husband's atheism, the priest had found precious help in her. Subsequently, however, only Madame Mazelle had remained to him, and not only did her fervour decline, but she was in no wise of a generous disposition. In course of time worries respecting her fortune consumed her, and she came less and less frequently to Saint Vincent, in such wise that nobody was left to the priest save a few poor creatures who in their wretchedness clung obstinately to the hope of a better life. And finally when no poor remained, the church became quite empty, and the abbé lived there in solitude, amidst the abandonment in which mankind now at last left his religion of error and wretchedness.

The abbé then felt that a world was indeed expiring around him. His complaisance had been powerless to save the life of the lying, poisonous _bourgeoisie_ which was devoured by its own iniquities. In vain had he cast the cloak of religion over its last agony; it had died amidst a final scandal. And in vain, too, had he sought a refuge in the strict letter of dogma, in order that he might concede nothing to the truths of science, which, he could realise, were mounting to the supreme and victorious assault by which the ancient edifice of Catholicism would be destroyed. Science, indeed, had at last effected its breach, dogma was finally swept away, and the Kingdom of God was about to be set, not in some fabulous paradise, but upon this very earth, in the name of triumphant justice. A new religion, the religion of man, at last truly conscious, free, and master of his destiny, was sweeping away the ancient mythologies, the forms of symbolism amidst which he had lost himself during the anguish of his long struggle against nature. After the temples of ancient idolatry, the Catholic churches in their turn had to disappear, now that a fraternal people set its certain happiness in the sole force of its living solidarity without need of any political system of punishments and rewards. Thus the priest, since confessional and holy table alike had been deserted, since the faithful had departed from his church, beheld each day when he celebrated mass there the cracks in the walls spreading, and the beams of the roofs yielding more and more. It was a constant crumbling, a gradual process of destruction and ruin, the slightest premonitory sounds of which he could detect. But since he had been unable to summon the builders even for the most urgent repairs, he must necessarily allow the work of death to follow its course and culminate in the natural end of things. Thus he simply waited and continued to say his mass, like a hero of faith, alone with his forsaken creed, whilst the roof cracked more and more above the altar.

A morning came when Abbé Marle perceived that another large stretch of the vaulting of the nave had split during the previous night. And although he now felt certain of the downfall which he had been anticipating for months past, he nevertheless came to celebrate his last mass, clad in his richest vestments. Very tall and broad-shouldered, with a nose like an eagle's beak, he still held himself firm and upright in spite of his advanced age. He dispensed with servers now, he came and went, spoke the sacramental words, and made the usual gestures, as if a great throng were pressing together before him, docile to his voice. But in the state of abandonment in which the church was left, only some broken chairs lay upon the flag-stones, suggesting the wretched-looking mouldy garden seats that are left forgetfully out of doors exposed to the rains of winter. Weeds grew round the columns, over which moss was spreading. All the winds of heaven streamed in through the broken windows, and the great doorway being half unhinged, remained partially open, allowing the animals of the neighbourhood to flock in. On that fine bright day, however, it was particularly the sunshine that poured into the edifice, like a conqueror, setting as it were a triumphal invasion of life amidst that tragic ruin where birds flew hither and thither, and where wild oats germinated even among the stone mantles of the old saints. Above the altar, however, there still reigned a great crucifix of painted and gilded wood, displaying a long, livid, pain-racked effigy, splashed with some blackish blood that dripped like tears.

Whilst Abbé Marle was reading the Gospel he heard a louder cracking, and some dust and some fragments of plaster fell upon the altar. Then, at the moment of the Offertory, the sinister rending began again, and it seemed as if the edifice were shaking before it fell. But the priest, collecting all the remaining strength of his faith together for the Elevation, prayed with his whole soul for the miracle for whose glorious, all-saving splendour he had so long been waiting. If it should so please God, the church would regain its vigorous youth, and be endowed with sturdy pillars upholding an indestructible nave. Masons were not necessary, the Almighty power would suffice, and a magnificent sanctuary would arise there, with chapels of gold, windows of purple, wood-work marvellously carved, and dazzling marble, whilst a multitude of the faithful on their knees would sing the hymn of Resurrection amidst the blaze of thousands of candles and the loud pealing of bells. But at the very moment when the priest, finishing his prayer, raised the chalice, it was not the miracle he asked for that came, it was annihilation. He stood there erect, with both arms raised in a superb gesture of heroic belief, and the vaulted roof was rent asunder as if by a bolt from heaven, and crashed downward in a whirlwind of fragments with a roar like that of thunder. The shaken steeple tottered and then in its turn fell, ripping the remainder of the roof open, and dragging down the rest of the sundered walls. And nought remained beneath the bright sun save a huge litter of stones and tiles, amidst which a fruitless search was made for Abbé Marle. He had disappeared as if the remnants of the shattered altar had consumed his flesh, drunk his blood. And in like way nothing was ever found of the great crucifix of painted and gilded wood. That also had been shattered to atoms, reduced to dust. Thus yet another religion was dead, the last priest saying his last mass had perished with the last of the churches.

For a few days old Hermeline, the retired schoolmaster, was seen prowling about the ruins, and talking aloud as old folk are wont to do when haunted by some fixed idea. His words could not be plainly distinguished, but he seemed to be still arguing and reproaching the abbé for having failed to obtain the needed miracle. Then, one morning, he was found dead in his bed. And later on, when the ruins of the church had been cleared away, a garden was planted there, with fine trees and shady walks, skirting sweet-smelling lawns. Lovers went thither on pleasant evenings, even as they went to the park of La Crêcherie. The happy city was ever spreading, children were growing and becoming lovers in their turn, lovers whose kisses in the shade again sowed future harvests. After the gay day of work came love amidst the roses blooming upon every side. And in that delightful garden where slept the dust of a religion of wretchedness and death, one now beheld the growth of human joy, the overflowing florescence of life.

IV

During yet another ten years the city continued growing, and organising new society in accordance with the principles of justice and peace. And at last, one 20th of June, on the eve of one of the great Festivals of Work, which took place four times a year, coinciding with the seasons, Bonnaire met with a strange experience.

He, Bonnaire, now nearly eighty-five years of age, had become the patriarch, the hero of work. Still straight and tall, with an energetic head under a crown of thick white hair, he remained active and gay, in the enjoyment of good health. Old revolutionary that he was, a theoretical Collectivist pacified by the sight of his comrades' happiness, he now tasted all the reward of his long efforts--the conquest of that harmonious solidarity amidst which he saw his grandchildren and great-grandchildren growing in all felicity.

That evening then, just as the daylight was waning, Bonnaire happened to be strolling near the entrance of the Brias gorges. He often walked abroad in this fashion, with the sole assistance of a stick, for the pleasure of viewing the countryside once more and recalling old-time memories. On this occasion he had just reached the spot where in former days had stood the gates of the Abyss, which had long since disappeared. Near that spot also a wooden bridge had once spanned the Mionne, but no trace of it remained, for the torrent had been covered over for a distance of about a hundred yards, to admit of the passage of a broad boulevard.

What changes there were! thought Bonnaire. Who would ever have recognised the former black and muddy threshold of the accursed factory in that broad, open space, over which there now passed a quiet, bright-looking avenue, lined with smiling houses? As he lingered there for a moment, erect and handsome, like the happy old man he was, he experienced great surprise on perceiving another old man, a stranger, huddled up on a wayside bench near him. And this other seemed to have been wrecked by misery, for his clothes were in tatters, his face ravaged and bushy with hair, his frame emaciated and trembling as if with some evil fever.

'A poor man!' muttered Bonnaire, speaking aloud in his astonishment.

It was certainly a poor man, and years had now gone by since Bonnaire had seen one. It was evident, however, that he who sat on the bench did not belong to the region. His shoes and clothes were white with dust, and he must have sunk upon that bench near the entry of the town from sheer fatigue, after tramping the roads for days and days. His staff and his empty wallet had fallen from his weary hands and lay at his feet. With an air of exhaustion he let his gaze wander around him, like one who is lost, who knows not where he may be.

Full of pity Bonnaire drew near to him. 'Can I help you, my poor fellow?' he asked; 'your strength is exhausted, and you seem to be in great distress.'

Then, as the other did not answer, but still let his eyes roam in a scared way from one point of the horizon to the other, Bonnaire continued: 'Are you hungry? do you need a good bed? Let me guide you--you will here find all the help you need.'

Thereupon the old and wretched-looking beggar began to stammer in a low voice, as if speaking to himself: 'Beauclair, Beauclair--is this really Beauclair?'

'Of course it is; you are at Beauclair, that's certain,' declared the former master-puddler with a smile. But on seeing the other give signs of increasing surprise and anxiety, he ended by understanding the truth: 'You knew Beauclair formerly, no doubt,' said he. 'It is perhaps a long time since you were last here?'

'Yes, it was more than fifty years ago,' the stranger answered in a husky voice.

Then Bonnaire burst into good-natured laughter. 'In that case I am not astonished if you find a difficulty in recognising the place,' he retorted. 'There have been some changes. For instance, here the Abyss works have disappeared, whilst yonder the sordid hovels of old Beauclair have been razed to the ground. And you can see that a new city has been built; the park of La Crêcherie has spread over everything, invading the former town with its greenery and turning it into a vast garden, where the little white houses peep brightly from among the trees. And thus one naturally has to reflect before one can recognise the place.'

The stranger had followed the explanations, turning his glance upon the various points which Bonnaire with gentle gaiety indicated. But again he wagged his head as if he could not believe what was told him. 'No, no,' said he, 'I don't recognise it; this can't be Beauclair. Yonder are the two promontories of the Bleuse Mountains, between which the Brias gorge opens; and yonder, too, far away, is the plain of La Roumagne. That's certain, but all the rest--those fine gardens and those houses belong to some other spot, some wealthy and smiling land which I never saw before. Ah! well, I shall have to walk further; I must have made a mistake in the road.'

After picking up his staff and his wallet, he was making an effort to rise from the bench when his eyes at last rested on the old man who had shown himself so obliging and friendly. And at the first glance which he gave Bonnaire he shuddered, and became anxious to depart. Had he recognised Bonnaire then, although he could not recognise the town? Bonnaire, for his part, was so stirred by the sudden flame which shot from the other's hairy countenance that he examined him more attentively. Where had he previously seen those bright eyes, which blazed in moments of savage violence? All at once his memory awoke, and in his turn he shuddered, whilst all the past lived anew in the cry which burst from his lips:

'Ragu!'

For fifty years people had believed him to be dead! But the crushed and mutilated body found in a gorge of the Bleuse Mountains, on the morrow of his flight, after his crime, had not been his. He lived, he lived, good heavens! He had come back, and to Bonnaire that extraordinary resurrection after so many events and so many years brought anguish--anguish respecting all that had happened in the past, and all that might happen to-morrow.

'Ragu, Ragu, it is you!' Bonnaire repeated.

The other already had his staff in his hand, his wallet on his shoulder. But as he was recognised why should he go off? It was certain now that he had not mistaken his road.

'It's me, sure enough, my old Bonnaire,' he replied; 'and since you are still alive, though you are ten years older than I, I have certainly a right to be alive also--though it's true that I'm very battered.'

Then, in the jeering tone of former times, he resumed: 'So you give me your word for it, that splendid big garden yonder, with those pretty houses, is really Beauclair? Well, since I've got here, I've only to look for an inn where they'll let me sleep in a corner of the stables.'

Why had he come back? What plans were rife under that bald skull, behind that wrinkled face, ravaged by so many years of evil and vagabond life? Bonnaire, who grew more and more anxious, could already picture Ragu disturbing the festival on the morrow by some scandal or other. He dared not question him at once, but he felt that it would be best to have him in his charge. Moreover, he was full of pity; his heart was quite stirred at finding the unhappy man in such a state of destitution.

'There are no more inns,' he answered; 'you will have to come to my place. You'll be able to eat as much as you like there, and you will sleep in a comfortable bed. Then we can have a chat. You'll tell me what you want, and I'll help you to content yourself if possible.'

But Ragu jeered again: 'Oh! what I want,' he retorted--'why, the wishes of an old beggar like me, more or less infirm, are of no account at all. What I want, indeed! Why, I wanted to see you all again, to give a glance in passing at the place where I was born. The idea worried me, and I shouldn't have died easy in mind if I hadn't come for a stroll in this direction. That's a thing anybody may do, isn't it? The roads are still free.'

'No doubt.'

'Well, so I started--oh! years ago. When a man's got bad legs and never a copper, he doesn't make much progress. All the same, one reaches one's destination at last, since here I am. And, it's understood, let's go to your place, since you offer me hospitality like a good comrade.'

The night was falling, and the two old men were able to cross new Beauclair without being remarked. On the way Ragu's astonishment increased; he glanced to right and to left, but could not recognise a single spot. At last, when Bonnaire stopped before one of the most charming of the dwellings, a house standing amidst a clump of fine trees, an exclamation escaped Ragu, showing that he still retained his ideas of former times: 'What! you've made your fortune; you've become a _bourgeois_ now!'

The former master-puddler began to laugh. 'No, no; I've never been anything but a workman, and I'm only one to-day. But in a sense it's true that we've all made our fortunes and all become _bourgeois_.'

As if his envious fears were quieted by that answer, Ragu began to sneer once more: 'A workman can't be a _bourgeois_,' said he, 'and if a man still works it's because he hasn't made his fortune.'

'All right, my good fellow, we'll have a chat about it, and I'll explain things to you. Meantime go in, go in.'

Bonnaire for the time being was dwelling alone in this house, which was that of his granddaughter, Claudine, now the wife of Charles Froment. Daddy Lunot had long since been dead, and his daughter, Ragu's sister, the terrible Toupe, had followed him to his grave during the previous year, after a frightful quarrel, which, as she expressed it, had turned her blood. When Ragu heard of the loss of his sister and father, he simply made a little gesture, as if to say that by reason of their age he had anticipated it. After an absence of half a century one is not surprised to find nobody one knew left among the living.

'So here we are in the house of my granddaughter, Claudine,' continued Bonnaire; 'she's the daughter of my eldest son, Lucien, who married Louise Mazelle, the daughter of the Rentiers, whom you must remember. Claudine herself has married Charles Froment, a son of the master of La Crêcherie. But she and Charles have taken their daughter Aline, a little girl of eight, to see an aunt at Formeries, and they won't be back till to-morrow evening.' Then he concluded gaily: 'For some months now the children have taken me to live with them, by way of petting me. Come, the house is ours; you must eat and drink your fill, and then I'll show you to your bed. To-morrow, when it's daylight, we'll see to all the rest.'

Ragu's head swam as he listened. All those names, those marriages, those three generations flitting by at a gallop quite scared him. How was he ever to understand things when so many unknown events and so many marriages and births had taken place? He did not speak again, but, seated at a well-spread table, ate some cold meat and fruit ravenously in the gay room, which was brilliantly illumined by an electric lamp. The comfort and ease which he felt around him must have weighed heavily upon the old vagabond's shoulders, for he seemed yet more aged, more utterly 'done for,' as with his face lowered over his plate he devoured the food, glancing askance the while at all the encompassing happiness in which he had no share. His very silence, his downcast mien at the sight of so much comfort, was expressive of all his long stored-up rancour, his powerless thirst for vengeance, his now irrealisable dream of triumphing and seeing disaster fall on others. And Bonnaire, again uneasy at the sight of his gloominess, wondered through what adventures he had rolled during the last half-century, and felt more and more astonished at finding him still alive and in such destitution.

'Where have you come from?' he ended by inquiring.

'Oh, from everywhere more or less!' Ragu answered with a sweeping gesture.

'Ah! so you've seen a good many countries and people and things?'

'Oh, yes; in France, Germany, England and America, and elsewhere. I've dragged my carcase, indeed, from one end of the world to the other.'

Then, lighting his pipe, he gave Bonnaire, before retiring to bed, some idea of his life as a wanderer, in rebellion against work, idle by nature and coveting enjoyment. He typified the spoilt fruit of the wage-system--the wage-earner who dreams of suppressing the masters in order to take their place, and in his turn crush down his fellows. In his estimation there could be no other happiness than that of making a big fortune and enjoying it, with the satisfaction that one had known how to exploit the misery of the poor. And, violent in language, but all the same cowardly in the master's presence, dishonest, addicted to drink, and incapable of steady work, he had rolled from workshop to workshop, from country to country, at times dismissed, at others impelled by some silly whim to take himself off. He had never been able to put a copper by, wherever he had found himself want had become his companion, each succeeding year bringing about a fresh decline in his fortunes. When old age arrived it was a wonder that he did not die, famished and forsaken, in some gutter. Until he was nearly sixty, however, he had still found some petty jobs to do. Then he had stranded in a hospital, but had been obliged to leave it, though only to fall into another one. For the last fifteen years he had thus been clinging to life--how, he could hardly tell; and now he begged and tramped the roads for the crust of bread and truss of straw that he needed. And nothing of his old nature had departed from him, neither his covert rage and jealousy, nor his eager desire to be a master and enjoy himself.

Restraining a flood of questions which rose to his lips, Bonnaire at last exclaimed, 'But all the countries you passed through must now be in a state of revolution! I know very well that we have progressed quickly here, and are in advance of the others. But the whole world is now stirring, is it not?'

'Yes, yes,' Ragu answered in his jeering way, 'they are fighting and building up a new society on all sides, but all that did not prevent me from starving.'

He had passed through strikes and terrible risings in Germany, in England, and especially in the United States. In all the countries through which his rancour and idleness had carried him, he had witnessed tragic events. The last empires were crumbling, republics were springing up in their place, while frontiers were being suppressed by the confederation of neighbouring nations. It was like a smash up of the ice at the advent of springtide, when the ice melts and disappears, uncovering the fertilised soil, where germs sprout and flower forth in a few days, under the glow of the great brotherly sun. All mankind was certainly in evolution, busying itself at last with the foundation of the happy city. But he, Ragu, bad workman, discontented reveller that he was, had simply suffered from all the catastrophes he had witnessed, merely encountering blows therein without ever finding an opportunity even to pillage a rich man's cellar, and, for once in his life, drink his fill. Nowadays, having become a confirmed old vagabond and beggar, he cared not a curse for the so-called city of justice and peace. It would not bring him back his twentieth birthday, it would not give him a palace full of slaves, where he might have ended his days amidst a round of pleasures, like the kings that books speak of. And he jeered bitterly at the idiocy of the human race which took so much trouble to prepare a somewhat cleaner social edifice for the great-grandchildren of the next century--an edifice which the men of nowadays would only know in dreams!

'But that dream has long sufficed for happiness,' quietly said Bonnaire. 'However, what you say is not true, the edifice is almost rebuilt even now, and is very beautiful and healthy and gay. I will show it to you to-morrow, and you will see if one does not taste pleasure in dwelling in it.'

Then he explained that on the following day he would take Ragu to witness one of the four Festivals of Work, which filled Beauclair with delight on the first day of each season. Each of these festivals was marked by some particular rejoicings appropriate to the seasons. The one on the morrow, the summer festival, would be bright with all the flowers and fruits of the earth, overflowing in prodigious abundance, amidst the sovereign splendour of horizon and sky, in which the powerful sun of June would blaze.

Ragu, however, relapsed into gloomy anxiety, a covert fear, indeed, lest he should really find the ancient dream of social happiness fulfilled at Beauclair. Was it a fact then that after traversing so many countries where the society of to-morrow was coming forth amidst such frightful struggles--was it a fact that he would behold it virtually installed in that town, his own, whence he had fled on a day of murderous madness? Had that happiness, for which he had sought so frantically on all sides, come into being on his native spot, during his absence? Had he returned merely to behold the felicity of others, now that he himself could no longer expect any joy in life? The idea that he had spoilt his existence to the very end seemed to him like a supreme crushing blow amidst his misery and weariness whilst he sat there silently finishing the bottle of wine which had been placed before him. And when Bonnaire rose to show him to his room--a sweet-smelling white room with a large white bed in it--he followed with a heavy step, suffering from the open-handed brotherly hospitality offered to him with such happy ease.

'Sleep well, my good fellow,' said Bonnaire, 'till to-morrow morning!'

'Yes, till to-morrow--unless this cursed world should fall to pieces during the night.'

Bonnaire, who also went to bed, found some difficulty in getting to sleep, for he still felt worried with respect to Ragu's intentions. He had a dozen times resisted his desire to put plain questions to him on the subject, from fear of provoking some dangerous explanation; for he thought it might be preferable to keep the matter in reserve and act hereafter according to circumstances. He feared some frightful scene; for perhaps that wretched vagabond, maddened by want and disaster, might have come back in order to provoke a scandal, insult Luc, insult Josine, and even attempt murder again. Bonnaire therefore resolved that he would not leave him alone for a moment on the following day. Moreover, in his desire to show him everything at Beauclair, there was the hope of morally paralysing him by an exhibition of such an abundance of wealth and power as would make him realise how futile would be the rage and rebellion of any one individual. When he should have seen and learnt everything he would no longer dare to stir, his defeat would be definitive. And thus Bonnaire at last fell asleep, resolved on waging that final battle for the sake of general harmony, peace, and love.

Already at six o'clock on the following morning a joyous flourish of trumpets sped over the roofs of Beauclair, announcing the Festival of Work. The sun was already high in the beautiful blue heavens. Windows opened, greetings flew through the greenery from one house to another, and one could feel that joy was already stirring the soul of the city, whilst the trumpet calls continued, arousing from garden to garden the cries of children and the laughter of loving couples.

Bonnaire, having quickly dressed himself, found Ragu up, washed and clad in some clean garments, which had been laid for him the previous evening on a chair. Now that he had well rested, the vagabond had become quite the jeerer of former days, resolved upon deriding everything and refusing to acknowledge the existence of the slightest progress. On seeing his host enter he indulged once more in his old evil insulting laugh.

'I say, old man!' he exclaimed, 'what a row they make with those trumpets! That must be precious disagreeable for those who don't like to be startled out of their sleep. Are you wakened every morning in your barracks by that music?'

The old master-puddler preferred to find his guest in this mood. He smiled quietly, and answered: 'No, no, that's only the _réveil_ of our high days and holidays. On other mornings one can oversleep oneself if one chooses, for the quiet is delightful. But when life's so pleasant one always gets up early, and only the infirm regret having to lie in bed.'

Then, with his attentive kindness, he added: 'Have you slept well? Did you find everything you wanted?'

Ragu tried to make himself disagreeable again. 'Oh! I can sleep anywhere,' said he. 'For years past I've been sleeping among hayricks, and they are worth the best beds in the world. It's just the same as regards all those inventions you have here--baths, and cold and hot water taps, and electrical heating appliances, which you only have to switch on. They may be useful, no doubt, when one's in a hurry, but it's still preferable to wash in the river and warm oneself before a good old stove.' And, as his host did not reply, he concluded by saying: 'You have too much water in your houses, they must be damp!'

What blasphemy! The idea of it, those streaming beneficent waters, so pure and so fresh, which were now the very health and joy and strength of Beauclair, whose streets and gardens they bathed as with eternal youth!

'Our water is our friend, the good fairy of our happy destiny,' Bonnaire replied. 'You will see it gushing forth on every side and fertilising our city. But come and have some breakfast; we will go out directly afterwards.'

That first breakfast in the bright dining-room, illumined by the rising sun, was delightful. On the white cloth there were eggs, milk, and fruit, with bread which was so golden and smelt so sweet that one could divine it had been kneaded by carefully worked machinery for a happy people. And the old host lavished on his wretched guest the most delicate attentions, a simple and affectionate hospitality, which set an atmosphere of gentleness and kindness all around.

Whilst they ate they again began to chat. As on the previous evening, Bonnaire prudently refrained from asking Ragu any direct questions. Yet he felt persuaded that the other, after the fashion of all criminals, had returned to the scene of his crime, consumed by an invincible craving to behold it again and know what had taken place during his absence. Was Josine still alive, and if so what was she doing? Had Luc been saved from death, and had he taken her to live with him? At all events, what had become of them both? Surely it was an ardent curiosity with respect to all those matters which glittered in the vagabond's bright eyes. As he did not mention them, however--preferring apparently to keep his secret locked within him--Bonnaire had to content himself with putting into execution the plan which he had thought of the previous night. Without mentioning Luc's name he began to explain the greatness of his work.

'For you to understand things properly, my good fellow,' said he, 'it's necessary that I should tell you something about our position before we take a stroll through Beauclair. We have now got to the triumph, the full florescence of the movement, which was scarcely beginning when you went away.'

Then he reverted to the origin of the evolution, the establishment of the works of La Crêcherie, based on an association between capital, labour, and brains, and its struggle with the Abyss, where the barbarous wage-system had been enforced. At last the latter had been vanquished and replaced, and La Crêcherie, with its pleasant white houses, had gradually spread over the site of Old Beauclair, the wretched home of want. Then Bonnaire showed how, both in a spirit of imitation and by reason of the necessities of the position, all the neighbouring works had ended by joining the original association; and how in due course other groups had been formed, every calling of a similar kind gradually being syndicated together, every family, as it were, meeting and uniting. Then the co-operation of producers on the one hand and of consumers on the other had completed the victory, work being reorganised on a basis of human solidarity, and bringing in its train a new form of society. There was now only four hours' work a day, and it was work freely chosen and constantly varied, in order that it might remain attractive; whilst machinery, the enemy of former days, had at present become a docile slave, upon whom all great efforts were cast. Then, moreover, the co-operation of consumers had swept away old-time trade, which had simply absorbed so much energy and gain. Huge general stores centralised products of all kinds, and distributed them according to consumers' needs, and in this manner millions of money were saved, agiotage and theft abstracting nothing on the way. Indeed, life was becoming greatly simplified: there was a tendency towards the complete suppression of specie and the closing of law courts and prisons; for disputes on matters of private interest ceased, and no longer urged man against man in some mad fit of fraud, pillage, or murder. Why should there be any crime left since there were no more poor, no more disinherited ones, since brotherly peace was being established more and more firmly every day, all being at last convinced that individual happiness came from the happiness of all? A long peace reigned, the blood tax--the conscription--had disappeared like all other taxes; there were no longer any rates of any kind or any prohibitive laws, but in lieu thereof full liberty for production and exchange. And in particular, since the parasites--the innumerable _employés_, functionaries, magistrates, barrack-men, and churchmen--had been suppressed, the greatest wealth had set in, such a prodigious heap of riches accumulating that from year to year the granaries became too small and threatened to burst beneath the ever-growing abundance of the public fortune.

'That's all right,' interrupted Ragu when Bonnaire had reached this point. 'But all the same, the real pleasure is to do nothing; and if you still work you are not a gentleman. To my idea there's no getting away from that. Besides, in one manner or another you are still paid, so that you still have a wage-system. But you are converted, eh?--you, who always demanded the absolute destruction of capital?'

Bonnaire laughed with joyous frankness. 'It's true, they've ended by converting me,' he said. 'I believed in the necessity of a sudden revolution, some stroke which would have placed power in our hands, together with possession of the soil and all the instruments of work. But how can one resist the force of experience? For so many years past I've been witnessing here the assured victory of social justice and brotherly happiness, which I dreamt of so long! And thus patience has come to me; I'm weak enough--if you like to put it that way--to rest content with to-day's conquests, certain as I am of to-morrow's final victory. Of course, I'm ready to grant that a great deal remains to be done--our liberty and justice are not complete, capital and the wage-system must entirely disappear, the social pact must be rid of all forms of authority, we must have the free individual in the free community. And we try to act in such wise that our grandchildren's children may bring about the reign of justice and liberty in their entirety.'

Then he explained the new educational methods which were in force, the working of the _crèches_, schools, and apprenticeship workshops, the adoption and cultivation of all the forms of energy springing from the passions, and the up-bringing of boys and girls together with the view of drawing yet closer the ties of love on which the city's strength would depend. The cause of greater freedom in the future rested with the couples of to-morrow; it might be taken that each generation growing up amidst an increase of equity and kindliness would contribute its stone to the final edifice. Meantime, the city's wealth would continue accumulating now that the suppression of the right of inheritance--almost entirely accomplished--prevented the building up of huge, scandalous, and poisonous individual fortunes; in such wise that the prodigious output of the work of all was becoming the property of all. Such things as the State Funds were also falling to pieces, the Rentiers, the idlers who lived on the work of others or on egotistical savings of their own, were disappearing. All citizens were equally rich, since the city--overflowing with work, freed from obstacles and hindrances, preserved from waste and theft--was piling up such immense wealth, that production would assuredly some day have to be moderated. Enjoyments once reserved for a few privileged beings were to-day already within the reach of all, and if family life remained simple the public edifices had become wonderfully sumptuous, large enough to hold huge multitudes, and so charming and so commodious as to be indeed true palaces of the people, centres of enjoyment where it loved to live. There were museums, and libraries, theatres, bathing establishments, places for diversions of one and another kind, together with simple 'porches,' opening out of meeting and lecture halls which the whole town frequented in its hours of rest. There was also a great number of hospitals, special isolated hospitals, for each kind of disease, and asylums which the infirm and the aged could enter freely; others, too, particularly for mothers and children, for pregnant women, who were carefully nursed from an early stage until their babes were born, and they themselves had fully recovered their strength. In this wise the new city affirmed its faith in motherhood and childhood--the mother who is the source of eternal life, the child who is the victorious messenger of the future.

'And now,' Bonnaire gaily concluded, 'since you have finished breakfast, let us go to see all those fine things, our Beauclair in its festive gaiety. I shan't spare you a single interesting nook of it.'

At this Ragu, who had resolved upon no surrender, simply shrugged his shoulders, repeating what he deemed to be his decisive argument: 'As you like; but all the same you are not gentlemen, you are still poor devils if you still work. Work's your master, and, when all's said, you've remained a people of slaves.'

At the door of the house a little electric car with accommodation for two persons was waiting. Similar cars were at the disposal of all. The old master-puddler, who, despite his advanced years, had retained a clear eyesight and a firm hand, made his companion get in, and then took his own seat as driver.

'You don't mean to cripple me for good with this mechanism, eh?' asked Ragu.

'No, no, don't be alarmed. We get on very well together, electricity and I,' Bonnaire replied, adding: 'You will find it everywhere; it is the one force which drives our machinery, and it is in general use in our homes, just like a domestic servant. Oh! it has been necessary to produce it in incalculable quantities, and yet it seems that there's not enough, and that the former master of La Crêcherie is trying to provide us with a still larger supply, in order that we may have something like a planet blazing over Beauclair at night-time, and live amidst the glow of eternal day.'

He laughed at this idea of putting all darkness to flight, whilst the car glided rapidly along the broad avenues. Before exploring Beauclair he proposed to go as far as Les Combettes, in order to show his companion the magnificent estate which was changing La Roumagne into a paradise of fertility. The festive morning was bright with sunshine, the roads resounded with gaiety, laughter and songs arising from all the other electric cars which were continually met on the way. A great many foot passengers were also arriving from neighbouring villages, mostly in bands, lads and girls brave in their ribbons, who joyously saluted Bonnaire the patriarch. And on either side of the road stretched a perfect sea of grain. Instead of the old-time narrow patches of ground, badly manured and badly tilled, one found but one sole, huge field, richly cultivated by thousands of associates. Whenever the soil showed sign of impoverishment, the properties it lacked were imparted to it by a chemical dressing; it was warmed, too, and screened, and high cultivation brought forth two crops of vegetables and fruit each season. Thanks to machinery, man was spared many efforts: the harvests sprang up as if by enchantment over leagues and leagues of ploughed land. It was even said that one would become master of the clouds, directing them upon one or another point at one's will by means of electric currents, in such wise as to obtain days of rain or days of sunshine, according to the needs of cultivation.

'You see, my good fellow,' resumed Bonnaire with a sweeping gesture, 'we have the wherewithal for bread--bread for all, the bread to which each acquires a right as soon as he is born.'

'So you feed even those who don't work?' asked Ragu.

'Certainly we do; but with very few exceptions only the sick and the infirm refrain from working. When one's in good health it bores one too much to remain doing nothing.'

The car was now traversing some orchards, and the endless rows of cherry trees covered with red fruit presented a delightful spectacle. The apricots, farther on, were not yet ripe, and green was the fruit which weighed down the apple and pear trees. Nevertheless there was extraordinary abundance, enough dessert indeed for a whole nation until the ensuing spring. But they were at last reaching Les Combettes. The sordid village of former days had disappeared, and white houses had been built among the greenery alongside the Grand-Jean, the once filthy stream, which was now canalised, its pure water contributing to all the surrounding fertility. One no longer beheld the country side of the old times, all abandonment, dirt, and wretchedness, in which the peasantry had wallowed for centuries with the obstinacy born of routine and hatred of each other. The spirit of truth and liberty had visited that spot, and an evolution had set in towards science and harmony, enlightening minds, reconciling hearts, and bringing health, wealth, and joy in its train. Since all had consented to co-operate the happiness of each had come into being.

'You remember old Combettes,' said Bonnaire, 'the hovels standing in mud and dung, and the fierce-looking peasants, who complained of dying of starvation? See what association has done for all that!'

In his savage jealousy, however, Ragu would not let himself be convinced. With that hatred of work which had remained in his blood, the hereditary hatred of a wage-earner chained to toil, he replied: 'If they work they are not happy. Their happiness is mendacious; the sovereign enjoyment is to do nothing.' And though in former times he had often reviled the priests, he now added: 'Doesn't the catechism say that work is man's punishment and mark of degradation? When once one gets to heaven one has nothing to do there.'

On the way back to Beauclair the car passed La Guerdache, which was now enlarged, and whose grounds were full of young mothers, their babes, and playful children. But even the sight of that palace of the people and its beautiful park did not influence Ragu. 'After all, what's the value of luxury and enjoyment which everybody can share?' said he. 'A thing that one can't have entirely to oneself isn't worth much.'

However, the little car was still speeding along, and they soon found themselves in Beauclair once more. The town, as Ragu had remarked on first perceiving it, did indeed present the aspect of a large garden. The houses, instead of being pressed close one to the other, as in the days of tyranny and terror, seemed to have dispersed in order that their inmates might enjoy more freedom, quietude, and health. Land cost nothing since all had been put in common from one to the other promontory of the Bleuse Mountains. Why, therefore, should folk have heaped themselves together when the whole great plain spread before them? Are a few thousand square yards of land too much for a family when so many immense tracts of the earth are absolutely uninhabited? Thus, each family had chosen its lot, and had built according to its fancy. Broad avenues ran past the gardens, supplying abundant means of communication, but people were not required to build their houses in line; they simply set them amongst the trees in the manner they pleased. Still, the dwellings had a family aspect, for all were clean and gay, and decorated with stoneware and faïence of bright colours, enamelled tiles, and so forth, which formed gables, borders, panels, friezes, and cornices, the convolvulus-blue, the dandelion-yellow, and the poppy-red of all this ornamentation imparting to the houses much the appearance of huge nosegays amidst the verdure of the trees. Then, on the squares, at the points where the avenues met, rose the many public buildings, huge piles in which triumphed steel and iron. Their magnificence was compounded of simplicity, of logical fitness for the purpose for which they were intended, and of intelligence in the choice of materials and style of decoration. In these buildings it was intended that the people should be at home; the museums, libraries, theatres, baths, laboratories, meeting and amusement halls were but so many common-houses, open to the entire community. Moreover, some portions of the avenues were already being covered with glass, and it was proposed to warm them in winter, so as to enable people to stroll there in comfort during cold and rainy weather.

Ragu gave so many signs of surprise, and seemed so lost, that Bonnaire began to laugh. 'Ah! it isn't easy to identify the place,' said he, 'but we are now on the old Place de la Mairie, whence started the four great thoroughfares--the Rue de Brias, the Rue de Formeries, the Rue de Saint-Cron, and the Rue de Magnolles. Only, as the old town-hall was falling to pieces from sheer rottenness, it was demolished, together with the old schools, where the boys learned to spell under the master's rod. And now, you see, there is a series of large pavilions, chemical and physical laboratories, where all are free to study and experiment when they think they have made some discovery which may prove useful to the community. Then, too, the four streets have been transformed, their hovels have been swept away, and little of them remains save the gardens and houses of the gentlefolk, in which sundry marriages have ended by placing the children of the poor devils of former times.'

Then Bonnaire went on to explain other transformations brought about by the victory of the new social system. For instance, although the sub-prefecture had been preserved and two wings had even been added to it, it had been converted into a public library. In the same way the law-courts had become a museum, whilst it had been possible at no very great cost to turn the prison with its cells into a bath-house where water abounded. Then there was the garden, which had been planted on the site of the fallen church--a garden where some fine shady verdure already arose around a little lake which now filled the ancient underground crypt. In this wise, as the various forms of authority disappeared, the buildings once allotted to them had reverted to the people, who had disposed of them in such a manner as to increase their own comfort and enjoyment.

However, whilst the car was ascending another fine long avenue Ragu again felt lost, and inquired of his guide: 'Where are we now?'

'In the old Rue de Brias,' Bonnaire answered. 'Ah! its aspect has greatly changed. Petty trade having completely disappeared, the shops shut up one after the other, and at last the old houses were demolished to make room for those new ones which smile so pleasantly among the hawthorns and lilac bushes. The Clouque, that poisonous sewer, has been covered up, and the side walk of this avenue, on the right, passes over it.'

He went on recalling the narrow, dark Rue de Brias of former times, with its ever-muddy pavement, over which weary workers had trudged day by day. Hunger and prostitution had prowled there at night, whilst poor housewives went from shop to shop to beg a petty credit. There had reigned the Laboques, levying tribute on all purchasers, whilst Caffiaux poisoned the workers with doctored alcohol, and Dacheux kept jealous watch over his meat, holy meat--the chosen food of the wealthy. Only the beautiful Madame Mitaine had been willing to close her eyes when a loaf or two happened to disappear from her shop-front on the days when the street urchins were unable to restrain their hunger. But now all the misery and suffering had been swept away, and the avenue ascended, broad, clean, and flooded with sunlight, with only the houses of happy workers upon either hand, whilst the multitude strolled about laughing and singing on that bright festive morning.

'But if La Clouque flow's under that grassy bank,' exclaimed Ragu suddenly, 'Old Beauclair must have been over yonder, on the site of that new park, where the white house-fronts are peeping out of the greenery?'

And this time he remained aghast. The spot he mentioned had indeed been Old Beauclair, the sordid mass of hovels spread out like an evil-smelling stagnant pond, with its streets lacking both light and air, and infected by their open drains. He particularly remembered the Rue des Trois Lunes, the darkest, narrowest, and filthiest of them all. But the blast of avenging justice had purified the spot, carried away the abominable cloaca, and in place thereof had set that greenery, amidst which had sprung dwellings of health and joy.

Bonnaire, amused by Ragu's astonishment, now drove him more slowly along the new thoroughfares of the happy City of Work. In honour of that day of rejoicing all the houses were gay with bunting; bright oriflammes flapped in the light morning breeze, and vivid drapery hung about doors and windows. The thresholds of the houses, too, were covered with roses, the streets even were bestrewn with them; such an abundance of roses being grown in the vast plantations of the neighbourhood that the whole town was able to adorn itself with them, like a woman on her bridal morn. Music resounded on all sides, the chorus singing of maids and youths flew past in sonorous waves, whilst the pure voices of the children soared aloft to the very sun itself. It seemed as if the limpid and rejoicing orb were also participating in the festival, as it cast great sheets of gold under the sky's sumptuous tent, so aerial and silken, and so delightfully blue. All the people were now flocking into the streets, arrayed in light-coloured garments adorned with beautiful stuffs, which had once been so dear and which were now at the disposal of all. New fashions, very simple in their magnificence, made the women look adorable. Gold--since money had gradually disappeared--was now simply used for purposes of adornment. Each little girl that was born found in her cradle her necklets, her bracelets, and her rings, even as the little ones of former days had found their toys. But jewellery now had no value, gold had simply become so much beauty. And, moreover, the electrical furnaces were about to produce incalculable quantities of diamonds and precious stones, sacks of rubies, emeralds, and sapphires--gems enough, indeed, to cover all the women of the world. The maids who passed hanging on their lovers' arms already had their hair adorned with constellations of flashing stars. And there was an endless procession of couples, those whom love in its freedom had just betrothed; the young folk of twenty, too, who had recently mated and were never more to part; and those also who had grown old amidst mutual affection, and whose hand-clasp had tightened with each succeeding year.

'Where are they all going like that?' Ragu at last inquired.

'Oh! they are calling on one another,' Bonnaire answered, 'inviting one another to the grand dinner which is to be given this evening, and which you will attend. And many are just strolling about in the sunshine for the love of the thing, because they feel gay and at home in our beautiful brotherly streets. Besides, there are entertainments and games on all sides, with admission gratis, of course, for one may freely enter all our public establishments. Those parties of children are being taken to one or another circus, and others of the crowd are going to meetings, theatrical performances, and concerts. Our theatres, you know, enter into our system of social education.'

Then, all at once, on reaching a house whose occupiers, it seemed, were about to go out, Bonnaire stopped the car. 'Would you like to visit one of our new houses?' he asked. 'This is where my grandson Félicien lives, and as we have just caught him at home, he will receive us.'

Félicien was the son of Séverin Bonnaire, who had married Léonie, the daughter of Ma-Bleue and Achille Gourier. He, Félicien, only a fortnight previously had for his part espoused Hélène Jollivet, daughter of André Jollivet and Pauline Froment. But when Bonnaire wished to explain those relationships to Ragu, the latter made the gesture of a man who feels quite lost amidst such a tangle of alliances. The young people were charming--the wife very young and adorably fair; the husband also fair, and tall and strong. Love perfumed all the bright, gay, simple, yet elegantly furnished rooms of their home, which, like the streets, was that day full of roses; for it seemed as if roses had rained upon Beauclair--there were some everywhere, even on the roofs. The whole house was visited, and then they returned to a room which served as a workshop--a large, square apartment, where an electrical motor was installed. Besides following three or four other callings, Félicien was by taste a metal-turner, and preferred to work at this avocation in his own home. Several of his comrades, young men of his own age, were similarly inclined, and a new movement was thus arising among the generation just reaching manhood. One found the worker on a small scale following some calling at home in all freedom, irrespective of work in the great general workshops. For these individual artisans the supply of electric power, which they found in their homes even as they found water there, was of wonderful assistance. Home-work under such conditions proved easy, and clean, and light, and some houses were gradually becoming family workshops and tending to the realisation of the formula: The free workman in the free city.

'Till this evening, my children,' said Bonnaire, taking leave. 'Shall you dine at our table?'

'Oh! it's impossible this time, grandfather,' was the reply; 'we have our places at grandmother Morfain's table. But we shall see one another at dessert.'

Ragu took his seat in the car again without speaking a word. He had remained silent throughout the visit, though for a moment he had paused before the little motor. At last, he once again managed to throw off the emotion which he had felt in the midst of so much comfort and happiness.

'Come,' he exclaimed, 'can one call those the houses of well-to-do _bourgeois_, when there's machinery in the largest room? I grant that your men are better lodged, and have more enjoyment, since want has disappeared. But they are still workmen, mercenaries condemned to labour! In the old days there were at least a few happy, privileged folk who did nothing. All your progress consists in reducing the entire community to common slavery!'

At this despairing cry from that devotee of sloth, whose religion was fast crumbling, Bonnaire gently shrugged his shoulders. 'One must understand, my good fellow,' said he, 'what it is that you call slavery. If it be slavery to breathe and eat and sleep--in a word, to live--why, then work is slavery. But if you live you must necessarily work; one cannot live an hour without doing work of some kind. However, we'll talk of all that by-and-by. For the present let us go home to lunch, and we'll spend the afternoon in visiting the workshops and the stores.'

After their meal, indeed, they went out again, but this time on foot, walking along leisurely. They crossed the entire works, all the sunlit halls, where the steel and copper of the new machinery shone like jewels in the bright radiance. That morning, moreover, some of the workers--parties of youths and girls--had come to decorate the machinery with garlands of verdure and roses; for was it not right that it should participate in the festival of work, powerful, gentle, and docile artisan that it was, bringing relief both to man and to beast? And nothing could have been gayer or more touching. The roses that adorned the presses, the huge hammers, the giant planing, rolling, and turning machines, proclaimed how attractive work had become, bringing comfort to the body and delight to the mind. Songs rang out, too, chains were formed, and amidst general laughter quite a _farandole_ began, spreading gradually from one hall to another, and transforming the entire works into an immense palace of rejoicing.

Ragu, who still remained impassive, walked about, raising his eyes to the lofty windows, which were bright with sunshine, or glancing now at the slabs under foot, and now at the walls of speckless brightness, or else examining the machines, many of which were unknown to him. They were huge creatures, provided with all sorts of intricate works, in order that they might perform most of the tasks once allotted to man, the most trying as well as the most delicate. Some had legs, arms, feet, and hands, so that they might move, embrace, clutch, and manipulate metal with fingers at once supple, nimble, and strong. The new puddling furnaces, in which the 'bloom' was kneaded mechanically, particularly struck Ragu. Was it possible that the 'bloom' came out like that, quite ready to pass under the hammer! And then there was the electricity that propelled the bridges, that set the huge hammers in motion, that worked the rolling-machinery, which could have covered the whole world with rails. On each and every side one found that sovereign electric force. It had become like the very blood of the factory, circulating from one to the other end of the workshops, giving life to all things, acting as the one source of movement, heat, and light.

'It's good, no doubt,' Ragu grunted. 'The place is very clean and very large, and ever so much better than our dirty dens of former times, where we found ourselves like pigs in their styes. There has certainly been a good deal of progress; but the worry is that one hasn't yet found a way to give each man an income of a hundred thousand francs.'

'Oh! but we have our income of a hundred thousand francs,' retorted Bonnaire jestingly. 'Just come and see.'

Then he took the other to the general stores--great barns, huge granaries, vast magazines--where all the produce and wealth of the city was accumulated. They had been enlarged, perforce, year by year; for one no longer knew where to store the crops, and indeed it had even been necessary to check the production of manufactured goods, to avoid encumbrance. Nowhere else could one better realise what an incalculable fortune a nation might amass when all intermediaries were done away with--the drones and the thieves, all those who had lived upon the work of others without producing anything themselves.

'There are our Rentes!' Bonnaire repeated; 'each of us can help himself here without counting. And don't you think that it all represents a hundred thousand francs' worth of happy life for each of us? We are all equally rich, it's true, and, as you have said, that would spoil your pleasure, fortune being nothing to you unless it be seasoned with the misery of others. Yet it has an advantage; for one no longer incurs the risk of being robbed or murdered some evening at a street corner, just for the sake of gain.'

Then he mentioned a movement that was setting in, quite apart from the working of the general stores--that is, a movement of direct exchange between producers, a movement which had originated among the petty family workshops. Perhaps then the great workshops and the huge general stores would end by disappearing in the course of the advance towards increase of liberty: the sovereign freedom of the individual amidst the freedom of all mankind.

Ragu listened, more and more upset by that conquest of happiness which he still wished to deny. And at a loss as to how he might hide the fact that he was sorely shaken, he exclaimed: 'So you're an Anarchist now!'

This time Bonnaire burst into noisy merriment. 'Oh! my good fellow, I used to be a Collectivist, and you reproached me for having ceased to be one. Now you make an Anarchist of me. But the truth is that we are no longer anything at all since the common dream of happiness, truth, and justice has been realised. But, now that I think of it, come a little way with me and see something else by way of finishing up our visit.'

He led him to the rear of the general stores, to the base of the mountain ridge, to the very spot, indeed, where Lange the potter had formerly installed his rudimentary kilns in an enclosure barricaded with dry stones. To-day a large building stood there, a manufactory of stoneware and faïence, whence came the enamelled bricks and tiles, the thousand bright-hued decorations which adorned the whole city. Yielding indeed to the friendly entreaties of Luc, and seeing a little equity arise to relieve the misery of the people, Lange had decided to take some pupils. Since the masses were reviving to joy he would be able to realise an old dream of his by making and scattering broadcast all the bright earthenware, glowing like golden wheatears, cornflowers and poppies, with which he had so long desired to enliven the house-fronts peeping out of the garden greenery. And beauty had blossomed forth under the touch of his big, genial hands--beauty in an admirable form of art, coming from the people and returning to it, instinct with all the popular primitive strength and grace. He had not renounced the making of humble utensils, kitchen and table pottery, pans, pots, pitchers, and plates--all exquisite in form and colour, setting the glorious charm of art in the most commonplace daily life; but he had each year increased his production, adorning the public buildings with superb friezes, peopling the promenades with graceful statues, setting up in the squares lofty fountains which looked like nosegays, and whence the water of the springs flowed with all the freshness of eternal youth. And the band of artists whom he had created in his own image now set the beauty of art in the very pots which the housewives used as receptacles for their preserves and jam.

As it happened, Lange was at the top of the little flight of steps on the threshold of the factory. Although he had nearly completed his seventy-fifth year, his short squat figure had remained robust. He still had the same rustic-looking square head, bushy with hair and beard, now white like snow. But at present all the kindliness, long hidden beneath his rough bark, gleamed from his eyes in clear smiles. A party of playful children stood before him, boys and girls, who pushed one another and stretched out their hands whilst he went on with a distribution of little presents, as was indeed his habit every _fête_ day. He thus apportioned among them some little clay figures modelled with a few thumbstrokes, coloured and baked by the gross, yet very graceful, and in some instances charmingly comical. They represented the most simple subjects, everyday occupations, the petty incidents and fugitive delights of the passing hour. There were children laughing or crying, young girls attending to their household duties, men at work--in fact, all life in its everlasting, marvellous florescence.

'Come, come, my children,' said Lange, 'don't be in a hurry, there are enough for all of you. Here, my pet, take this little girl who's putting on her stockings; and for you, my lad, here's this boy coming back from school. Ah! you little darky, yonder, take this smith with his hammer.'

He shouted and laughed, vastly amusing himself in the midst of all those children, who struggled for the possession of his exquisite little figures.

'Ah! be careful!' he cried, 'you must not break them. Put them in your rooms, so that you may have some pretty colours and pleasant lines before your eyes. And in that wise when you grow up you will love what's beautiful and good, and be handsome and good yourselves.'

It was his theory that the people needed beauty in order to become healthy and brotherly. Everything that surrounded them, particularly all objects of current use--utensils, furniture, and dwellings--ought to suggest beauty. And belief in the superiority of aristocratic art was imbecile. The greatest, most touching and most human art was that into which most life entered. Moreover, the work that proved immortal and defied the centuries was one that sprang from the multitude and summed up for it an epoch or a civilisation. And it was ever from the people that art flowered forth in order that it might embellish the people themselves and impart to them the perfume and the radiance which were as necessary to their life as was daily bread.

'Ah! here's a peasant reaping, and a woman washing linen. Take that one, my big lassie; and you, my little man, there's one for you. Well, it's over now. Mind you are very good; kiss your mammas and papas for me. Ah! my little lambs, my little chicks, life is beautiful, life is good!'

Ragu had listened motionless and silent, but he was evidently more and more surprised. At last, with a ferocious sneer he exploded: 'Ah! Master Anarchist!' said he, 'so you no longer talk of blowing up the whole show, eh?'

Lange turned sharply and looked at Ragu without recognising him. However, he displayed no anger, but simply began to laugh again: 'Ah! so you know me,' he said, 'though what your name is I can't remember. Well, yes, it's true, I did wish to blow up the whole show. I cried it everywhere, to all the winds of the sky, and I heaped malediction after malediction upon the accursed city, announcing its approaching destruction by iron and fire. I had even resolved to do justice myself and raze Beauclair as by lightning. But things turned out otherwise. Enough justice came to disarm me. The town was purified, and rebuilt, and I can't destroy it now that all I wanted, all I dreamt of, is being realised--isn't that so, Bonnaire; we've made peace, eh?'

Thereupon Lange, the former Anarchist, held out his hand to the ex-Collectivist with whom he had once had such bitter quarrels: 'We were ready to eat one another, were we not, Bonnaire?' he resumed. 'We agreed as to the city of liberty, equity, and cordial understanding which we wished to reach; only we differed as to the best road to follow, and those who thought that they ought to turn to the right were ready to massacre those who showed a desire to turn to the left. But now that we've all reached our destination, it would be too stupid of us to continue quarrelling. Is that not so, Bonnaire? As I said before, peace is made.'

Bonnaire, who had retained the potter's hand in his grasp, pressed and shook it affectionately.

'Yes, yes, Lange,' he replied; 'we did wrong in not coming to an understanding, it was perhaps that which prevented us from making progress. Or perhaps we were all right, since now here we are, hand in hand, willing to admit that at bottom we all wanted the same thing.'

'And if things are not yet altogether such as absolute justice would require,' Lange resumed, 'we can rely on those lads and lassies to continue the work and some day finish it. You hear, my little chicks, my little lambs, love each other well.'

The shouting and laughing was beginning afresh, when Ragu in his brutal fashion intervened once more: 'But I say, you spoilt Anarchist, what about your Barefeet, have you made her your wife, eh?'

Tears started to Lange's eyes. Nearly twenty years previously the tall and beautiful creature whom he had compassionately picked up on the roads, and who had worshipped him like a slave, had died in his arms, the victim of a frightful and mysterious accident. He had spoken of an explosion in one of his kilns, saying that its iron door had been carried away, and had struck Barefeet full in the bosom. But the truth was assuredly different. She had assisted him in his experiments with explosives, and must have been struck down during some attempts to charge those famous little 'stock-pots,' of which he had spoken so complacently, intending to deposit them at the town-hall, the sub-prefecture, the law-courts--in all the places, indeed, where there was any form of authority to be destroyed. For months and for years that tragic death had made Lange's heart bleed, and even nowadays, after the attainment of so much happiness, he still wept for the loss of that gentle yet impassioned woman who, in return for the alms of a piece of bread, had for ever bestowed on him the royal gift of her beauty.

He strode roughly towards Ragu: 'You are a bad man,' he cried, 'why do you stab me in the heart like that? Who are you? Where have you sprung from? Don't you know that my dear wife is dead, and that every evening I still ask her forgiveness, accusing myself of having caused her death? If I haven't become a bad man, I owe it to her dear memory, for she is always with me, she is my good counsellor. But you, you are a bad man, I don't want to recognise you, I don't want to know your name. Go away, go away from our city!'

He was superb in his dolorous violence. The poetic spirit that dwelt within his rugged form, and which had formerly manifested itself in vengeful flights of fancy of a sombre grandeur, had now softened, tempering his heart with infinite quivering kindliness.

'Have you recognised him then?' asked Bonnaire anxiously. 'Who is he? Tell me.'

'I do not wish to recognise him,' Lange repeated yet more rigorously. 'I shall not say anything--let him go his way, let him go his way at once! He isn't fit to be one of us.'

Thereupon Bonnaire, feeling convinced that the potter had recognised Ragu, gently led the latter away in order to avoid any painful explanations. For his part Ragu evinced no desire to linger and quarrel, but retired in silence. All that he had seen and heard had dealt him blow after blow in the heart, filling him with bitter regret and boundless envy. He had begun to stagger beneath the shock of that happiness, in which he had not, and would never have, the slightest part.

But it was particularly the aspect of Beauclair in the evening that upset him. It had become a custom for each family to set its table in the street and dine there on that first day of summer. The repast was like a fraternal communion of the whole city, the bread was broken, and the wine was drunk in public, and the tables were at last brought together in such wise that they formed but one table, the whole town changing into a vast banqueting-hall, where the people became one sole family.

At seven o'clock, whilst the sun was still shining, the tables were set out, decorated with roses, that rain of roses which had perfumed Beauclair ever since the morning. The white cloths, the decorated crockery, the glass and the silver reflected the purple glow of the sunset. As silver money, like gold money, was fast disappearing, each now had his or her silver goblet, even as in olden time one had goblets or mugs of pewter. And Bonnaire insisted on Ragu taking his seat at his table, or rather at that of his granddaughter Claudine, who had married Luc's son, Charles Froment.

'I have brought you a guest,' he simply said to the others, without naming Ragu. 'He is a stranger, a friend.'

And all made answer: 'He is welcome.'

Bonnaire kept Ragu near him. But the table was a long one, for four generations elbowed one another. When Bonnaire the patriarch looked round he could see his son Lucien and his daughter-in-law Louise Mazelle, both of whom were now over fifty. He could also see his granddaughter Claudine and his grandson-in-law, Charles Froment, both in their prime; and he could likewise see his great-granddaughter Alice, a charming little maid, eight years of age. And all manner of kith and kin followed. Bonnaire explained to Ragu that a gigantic table would have been needed if his three other children, Antoinette, Zoé, and Séverin, had not arranged to dine at other tables with their own offspring. At dessert, however, they would bring the tables together in a neighbourly fashion, in suchwise that they would end by being all together.

Ragu more particularly turned his eyes upon Louise Mazelle, who still looked very charming and active. He was no doubt surprised by the sight of that daughter of the _bourgeoisie_, who invariably displayed so much affection for her husband Lucien, the scion of a working-class stock. Leaning towards Bonnaire, the old vagabond at last asked him in an undertone: 'Are the Mazelles dead then?'

'Yes; the dread of losing their money killed them. The conversions which upset everything and foreshadowed the approaching suppression of Rentes altogether, fell upon them like so many thunderbolts. The husband was the first to die, killed by the idea that his idle days were over and that he would perhaps have to work again. Then the wife dragged on for a while, cloistering herself at home and no longer daring to go out, convinced as she was that as violent hands had been laid on Rentes people must nowadays be murdered at every street-corner. It was in vain that her daughter proposed to take her with her; she stifled at the thought of being fed by others, and at last one day she was found dead--stricken by apoplexy, her face quite black, and resting among a package of her Rente certificates, which had virtually lost all value. Poor people! They died in a state of stupefaction, absolutely overcome, and declaring that the world had been turned topsy-turvy.'

Ragu wagged his head. He was not inclined to weep for those _bourgeois_, but at the same time he was of opinion that a world whence idleness was banished was not worth living in. Then he again looked round him, and became yet gloomier as he noticed the rising spirits of one and all, and the abundance and luxury which prevailed at the table, though to the others those things were now only natural, and gave no cause for vanity. The women were all arrayed in similar festive garb, similar light, charming silks; and precious stones--rubies and sapphires and emeralds--glittered in the hair of all. But the roses, the superb roses, were preferred to the gems by far, for they lived, and were therefore the more precious.

Already in the middle of the meal, which was made up of delicate and simple viands, vegetables, and fruit especially, everything being served on silver dishes, joyous songs began to arise, saluting the setting sun and bidding it _au revoir_, in the certainty that in a few hours' time it would happily arise again. And all at once, amidst the singing, a delightful incident occurred. All the birds of the neighbourhood--the robins, the blackcaps, the finches, even the sparrows, flew down on the tables before retiring to rest among the darkening greenery. They alighted boldly on one's shoulders, hopped down to peck the crumbs on the cloth, and accepted dainties from the hands of the children and the women. Since Beauclair had become a town of concord and peace they had been aware of the change there; they no longer feared aught from its kindly inhabitants--neither snares nor gunshots. And they had grown familiar in their way; they formed part of the various families; each garden had its denizens, who at meal-time flew down to take their share of the common food.

'Ah! here are our little friends!' cried Bonnaire. 'How they chatter! They know very well that to-day is a festival. Crumble some bread for them, Alice!'

Ragu, with his face darkening and a dolorous expression in his eyes, watched the birds as they flew down from every side, like a very whirlwind of small light feathers to which the last sunbeams imparted a golden glow. Those birds made the dessert quite lively, so many were the little feet hopping jauntily among the cherries and the roses. And of all the felicity and splendour that Ragu had witnessed since the morning, nothing had so clearly and so charmingly told him how peaceful and how happy was that young community. For him it was like a supreme blow; he suddenly arose and said to Bonnaire: 'I'm stifling, I must walk about. And besides, I want to see everything, all the tables, all the people.'

Bonnaire understood him well. Was it not Luc and Josine whom he wished to see? Was not all the ardent curiosity that he had displayed since his return culminating in a desire to behold them? Still avoiding a decisive explanation, Bonnaire answered: 'Very well, I will show you; we will make the round of the tables.'

The first they reached--the one set out before the next house--was that of the Morfains. Petit-Da presided over it beside his wife, Honorine Caffiaux, both of them with snowy hair; and with them were their son Raymond, their daughter-in-law Thérèse Froment, and their eldest grandson, Maurice Morfain, a tall youth, nineteen years of age already. Then, on the other side, came Achille Gourier's line, with his widow, Ma-Bleue, whose large sky-blue eyes retained all their intensity, though she was now nearly seventy years old. She would soon be a great-grandmother, through her daughter Léonie, married to Séverin Bonnaire, and her grandson, Félicien, born of that marriage, and lately wedded to Hélène, the daughter of Pauline Froment and André Jollivet. All were present, even both of the last named, who had come with their daughter. And some of them were making merry with Hélène, suggesting that if her firstborn should be a son he ought to be called Grégoire. Meantime her sister Berthe, though she was scarcely fifteen, already laughed at the soft things said to her by her cousin Raymond, thus offering promise of another love-match in the future.

The arrival of Bonnaire was hailed with joyous acclamations. Ragu, who was losing himself more and more amidst the tangle of matrimonial alliances, particularly desired that the two Froments seated at this table should be pointed out to him. They were two of Luc's daughters, Thérèse and Pauline, both well on the road to their fortieth year, but still displaying a bright and healthy beauty. Then, as the sight of Ma-Bleue reminded Ragu of old Mayor Gourier and Sub-Prefect Châtelard, he wished to know how they had ended. Bonnaire told him that they had passed away, one a few days later than the other, after spending their last years in close intimacy, linked together by the loss of the beautiful Léonore. Gourier, the first to depart, had with difficulty accustomed himself to the new state of things. He had often raised his arms to heaven in astonishment at being an employer of labour no longer; and he had been wont to talk of the past with all the melancholy of an aged man, who, although he would willingly have devoured the priests in former days, had actually begun to regret the ceremonies of the Catholic Church, the First Communions and processions, the incense and the pealing bells. Châtelard, on the other hand, had gallantly fallen asleep in the skin of an Anarchist, for such he had gradually become in the midst of his diplomatic reserve, accomplishing his destiny such as he had wished it to be--living happy and forgotten in the midst of that Beauclair which was now rebuilt and triumphant--and at last disappearing in silence with the _régime_ whose funeral procession he had so complacently followed, he himself swallowed up, as it were, in the collapse of the last ministry.

But there was a finer, a more noble, death to be mentioned, the death of Judge Gaume, which was recalled by the presence at that table of his grandson André and his great-granddaughters Hélène and Berthe. Alone with his grandson, Gaume had lived to the age of ninety-two in all the desolation of his spoilt and dolorous life. On the day, however, when the law courts and the prison were closed, he had felt himself in a measure delivered from the haunting torture of his career as a judge. A man judging men, consenting to play the part of infallible truth, absolute justice, in spite of all the possible infirmities of his mind and his heart, the thought of it made Gaume shudder, filled him with excessive scruples, dreadful remorse, terror lest he should indeed have been a bad judge. However, the justice which he had long awaited, which he had feared he might never see, had dawned at last--not the justice of an iniquitous social system, reigning with the sword, with which it defends a small minority of despoilers, and with which it strikes the great multitude of wretched slaves, but justice as between free man and free man--justice allotting to each his share of legitimate happiness, and bringing in its train truth and brotherliness and peace.

On the morning of the day he died Gauine sent for an old poacher whom he had formerly condemned to a heavy punishment for killing a gendarme who had dealt him a sabre stroke, and he publicly expressed his contrition, and cried aloud all the doubts which had poisoned his career. He proclaimed all the crimes of the Code, all the errors and falsehoods of the Statutes, those weapons of social oppression and hatred, those corrupt foundations of the social system whence spring perfect epidemics of theft and murder.

'And so,' Ragu resumed, 'those young folk seated at that table, that Félicien and his wife Hélène, at whose house we called this morning, are at once the grandchildren of the Froments, the Morfains, the Jollivets, and the Gaumes? But doesn't the blood of such enemies poison those in whose veins it now flows?'

'No, indeed,' Bonnaire quietly replied, 'that commingling of blood has brought reconciliation, and the race has acquired more beauty and strength from it.'

Fresh bitterness awaited Ragu at the next table--that of Bourron, his old chum, the boon companion of his days of sloth and drunkenness, whom he had ruled and led astray so easily. The idea of it! Bourron happy, Bourron saved, when he himself remained in his hell! In spite of his many years Bourron did indeed look quite triumphant as he sat there beside his wife Babette, she who had ever remained cheerful, whose unchangeable hopes and optimism had found fulfilment without even moving her to astonishment. Was it not natural? One was happy because one always ends by being happy.

And around the Bourrons there had been no limit to the swarming of offspring. There was first their eldest daughter, Marthe, who had married Auguste Laboque and had given birth to Adolphe, who in his turn had married Germaine, the daughter of Zoé Bonnaire and Nicholas Yvonnot. There was next their son Sébastien, who had married Agathe Fauchard, and had begotten Clémentine, who on her side had married Alexandre Feuillat, the son of Léon Feuillat and of Eugénie Yvonnot. The fourth generation proceeding from those two branches of Bourron's family was already represented by two little girls, Simonne Laboque and Amélie Feuillat, each of them in their fifth year. And by virtue of the kinship established by marriage the party further included Louis Fauchard, married to Julienne Dacheux, who had given him a daughter, Laure; and Évariste Mitaine, married to Olympe Lenfant, by whom he had had a son Hippolyte. Then there was the aforesaid Hippolyte himself, now the husband of Laure Fauchard, and the father of a lad in his eighth year, named François, in such wise that the fourth generation was sprouting vigorously on this side also. Throughout festive Beauclair one could not have found a larger table than that where intermingled the descendants of the Bourrons, the Laboques, the Bonnaires, the Yvonnots, the Fauchards, the Feuillats, the Dacheux, the Lenfants, and the Mitaines.

Bonnaire, who here again found one of his own children, Zoé, gave Ragu some particulars respecting those whom death had carried off. Old Fauchard and his wife Natalie--he always in a state of stupor and she always complaining--had gone off without understanding the great changes which were taking place. Feuillat, on his side, had beheld the triumph of his work, that vast estate of Les Combettes, ere he departed. Lenfant and Yvonnot had lately followed him to their graves, in that earth which was now loved with intelligence and fertilised with virile power. And after the Dacheux, the Caffiaux and the Laboques, those relics of the vanished trading system, the beautiful bakeress, the good Madame Mitaine, had passed away full of years, kindliness, and beauty.

But Ragu was no longer listening--he could not take his eyes from Bourron. 'He looks quite young,' he muttered, 'and his Babette still has her pretty laugh.'

He recalled the sprees of other days, Bourron and he lingering late in Caffiaux's den, railing against the masters, and at last staggering home, dead drunk. And he recalled his own long life of wretchedness, the fifty years that he had squandered in rolling from workshop to workshop through the world. To-day the experiment had been made and made successfully. Work, reorganised and regenerated, had saved his old chum when he was already half lost, whereas he, Ragu, had come back annihilated by the old labour system, full of misery and suffering, that iniquitous wage-system, which poisoned and destroyed.

All at once there came a charming incident which brought Ragu's anguish to a climax. Simonne Laboque, the daughter of Adolphe and Germaine, a fair-haired little maid about five years old, took some rose petals, scattered over the table, in her chubby little hands, and smilingly poured them over her great-grandfather's white head.

'There! grandpa Bourron, there you are, and there's some more! They're to make you a crown. Oh! you've some in your hair, and in your ears, and on your nose too. You've some everywhere! And _bonne fête, bonne fête_, grandpa Bourron!'

The whole table laughed, applauded, and acclaimed the old man. But Ragu fled, dragging Bonnaire with him. He was trembling, he could scarcely remain erect. When they had got a little distance away, however, he suddenly said to Bonnaire in a husky voice: 'Listen, what's the use of keeping it back any longer? I only came to see _them_. Where are they? Show them me!'

He was speaking of Luc and Josine; and, as Bonnaire, who had fully understood it, delayed replying, he continued: 'You have been taking me about ever since this morning and I have seemed to be interested in everything, yet I can only think of them. It was the thought of them indeed that brought me back here amidst so much fatigue and suffering. I heard while I was far away that I hadn't killed him. They are both still alive, are they not? They have had several children--they are happy, triumphant, is that not so?'

Bonnaire was reflecting. For fear of a scandal he had hitherto delayed the inevitable meeting. But had not his tactics succeeded? Had not a kind of holy awe come over Ragu in presence of the grandeur of the accomplished work? Bonnaire could tell that his companion was quivering, distracted, too nerveless to think of committing another crime. And so, with his air of serene good nature, he finished by replying, 'You want to see them, my good fellow; well, I will show them to you. And it's quite true, you will see happy folk.'

Luc's table came immediately after that of Bourron. He sat on one side of it, in the centre, with Josine on his right, whilst on his left hand were Sœurette and Jordan. Suzanne also was present, seated in front of Luc; and near her Nanet and Nise had taken their places. They in their turn would soon be great-grandparents, but their eyes still laughed under their fair hair, which had now become somewhat paler in hue, as in the distant days when they had looked like two little toys--two little curly lambs. All around the table sat the younger members of Luc's family. There was Hilaire, his eldest son, who had married Colette, the daughter of Nanette and Nise, and had become the father of Mariette, now nearly fifteen years of age. In like manner from Paul Boisgelin and Antoinette Bonnaire had sprung Ludovic, who would soon be twenty; and there was a promise of marriage between Ludovic and Mariette, who dined side by side, spending much of their time in whispering together, having little secrets of their own to communicate. Then came Jules, the last of the Froments, who had married Céline, the daughter of Arsène Lenfant and Eulalie Laboque; this pair having a boy of six named Richard, a child of angelic beauty, the particular favourite of his grandfather Luc. And afterwards followed all the kinsfolk; this being the table where the blood of old-time enemies was most closely blended, that of the Froments, the Boisgelins, and the Delaveaus mingling with that of the Bonnaires, the Laboques, and the Lenfants, the artisans, traders, and tillers of the soil; in such wise that the whole social communion whence the new city, the Beauclair of justice and peace, had sprung, was represented here.

At the moment when Ragu drew near to the table, a last ray of the setting sun enveloped it as with a glory, and the clumps of roses, the silver plate, the light silk gowns and the diamond-spangled hair of the women coruscated amidst the splendour. But the most charming incident that attended the orb's farewell was another flight of the birds of the vicinity, who yet once again flew around the diners before retiring to rest among the branches. There came such coveys and such a flapping of little wings that the table was covered as with a snow of warm living down. Friendly hands took hold of the birds, caressed them, and then let them go. And the confidence thus displayed by the robins and the finches was fraught with adorable sweetness. In that calm evening atmosphere it seemed like a sign that an alliance was henceforth formed between all creatures, that universal peace reigned at last between men and animals and things.

'Oh, Grandpa Luc!' cried little Richard, 'just look, there is a blackcap drinking water out of Grandma Josine's glass!'

It was true; and Luc, the founder of the city, felt both amused and touched by it. The water came from those fresh and pure springs which he had captured among the rocks of the Bleuse Mountains, and which had given birth to the whole town of gardens and avenues and plashing fountains. When the bird had flown away Luc took up the glass, and raised it amidst the purple glow of the sunset, saying: 'Josine! we must drink--we must drink to the health of our happy city!'

And when Josine, who all her life had remained an _amorosa_, a creature of tender heart beneath her white hair, had laughingly moistened her lips with the water, Luc in his turn drank of it and resumed, 'To the health of our city, whose _fête_ it is to-day! May it ever increase and spread, may it grow in liberty, prosperity, and beauty, and may it win the whole world over to the work of universal harmony!'

In the last sunray, which set an aureola round his head, he looked superb--still young even, overflowing with triumphant faith and joy. Without pride or emphasis he simply expressed the delight he felt at seeing his work so full of life and strength. He was the founder, the creator, the father; and all those joyous people, all who sat at those tables celebrating work and the fruitfulness of summer, were his people, his friends, his kinsfolk, his ever-spreading, brotherly, and prosperous family. An acclamation greeted the ardently loving wishes which he offered up for his city, ascending into the evening air, and rolling from table to table even to the most distant avenues. One and all had risen to their feet, in their turn holding their glasses aloft and drinking the health of Luc and Josine, the heroes, the patriarchs of work; she, the redeemed one, glorified as spouse and as mother, and he the saviour, who, to save her, had saved the whole wretched world of the wage-earners from iniquity and suffering. And it was a moment full of exaltation and magnificence, testifying to the passionate gratitude of the vast throng for all the active faith which had been shown, and proclaiming the community's final entry into the reign of glory and love.

Ragu turned ghastly pale and trembled in all his limbs as that gust of triumph swept by. He could not endure the sight of Luc and Josine, so radiant with beauty and kindliness. He recoiled and staggered, and was on the point of fleeing when Luc, who had noticed him, turned towards Bonnaire.

'Ah! my friend, you were lacking to make my joy complete,' said he. 'You have ever been like my other self, the bravest, sturdiest, most sensible artisan of our work, and people must not praise me without praising you also. But who is that old man that I see with you?'

'He is a stranger.'

'A stranger! Let him approach then. Let him break with us the bread of our harvests, and drink the water of our springs. Our city is a city of welcome and peace for all men. Make room, Josine! And you, friend, whom we do not know, come, seat yourself between my wife and me, for we should like to honour in you all our unknown brothers of the other cities of the world.'

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

'No, no, I cannot.'

'Why not?' Luc gently asked. 'If you come from afar, if you are weary, you will here find helping and comforting hands. We ask you neither your name nor your past. Here all is forgiven; brotherliness reigns alone, in order that the happiness of all may produce the happiness of each. And you, dear wife, repeat all that to him--the words will come gently and convincingly from your lips, for it seems as if I only frighten him.'

Thereupon Josine herself spoke: 'Here! my friend,' said she, 'here is our glass, why should you not drink our health and your own? You come from afar, and you are a brother, in you we shall have the pleasure of still enlarging our family. It is a custom at Beauclair now, on days of festival, to exchange a kiss of peace which effaces everything. Take this glass and drink, for the love of all!'

But Ragu again recoiled, paler and trembling more violently than before, stricken with terror indeed as at some idea of sacrilege: 'No, no, I cannot!'

Did Luc and Josine at that moment suspect the truth, did they recognise the wretched man who had returned merely to experience fresh suffering after so long dragging about with him his destiny of sloth and corruption? As they looked at him an expression of deep sadness came into their eyes which had beamed so kindly. And by way of conclusion Luc simply said: 'Go then, since you desire it, since you cannot belong to our family, at the hour when it is drawing yet more closely together, pressing around on all sides, hand in hand. Look! it is mingling, tables are joining tables, and soon there will be but one board for the whole of our city of brothers!'

This was true; the people were gathering together in neighbourly fashion--each table seemed to set out on the march towards the next one, in such wise that they all met and joined, as invariably happened at the close of that repast in honour of the festival of Summer. And it was all quite natural, the children at first served as messengers, going from table to table, for there was a tendency among the scattered members of particular families to gather together and seat themselves side by side. How could Séverin Bonnaire, who sat at the table of the Morfains, Zoé Bonnaire, who sat at that of the Bourrons, and Antoinette Bonnaire, who sat at that of Luc, help feeling drawn towards the paternal table, where their elder brother Lucien had his place? And was it not natural that the Froments, scattered like the seed corn which one casts into different furrows--Charles being among the Bonnaires, Thérèse and Pauline among the Morfains--should desire to join their father, the founder and creator of the city? Thus one beheld the tables marching and uniting together in such wise that not a break soon remained along the avenues, before the doors of the gay houses. The paschal feast of that brotherly people was about to continue under the stars, in a vast communion, all being seated elbow to elbow, at the same board, among the same scattered rose petals. The whole city thus became a gigantic banqueting-hall, the families were blended into one, the same spirit animated every breast, and the same love made every heart beat. Meantime from the far-spreading pure heavens fell a delightful, sovereign peace, the harmony of spheres and men.

Bonnaire had not intervened, but he had kept his eyes on Ragu, watching for the change that he expected after that day of surprises which, one by one, had shaken the wanderer until at last he was terrified and transported by that final blaze of glory. At last realising that he was sorely stricken, and tottering, Bonnaire gave him his hand. 'Come, let us walk a little,' he said, 'the evening air is so mild. And tell me, do you now believe in our happiness? Surely you must now see that one may work and at the same time be happy. Indeed, joy and health and perfect life are to be found in work. To work is to live. And only a religion of suffering and death could have made work a curse, and eternal sloth the happiness of heaven! Work is not our master, it is the breath of our lungs, the blood of our veins, the one sole reason why we love and create and form immortal humanity!

But Ragu, as if exhausted by fatigue, weary unto death amidst his defeat, ceased arguing: 'Oh, leave me, leave me,' said he. 'I am only a coward, a child would have had more courage, and I hold myself in contempt.' Then in a whisper he went on: 'I came to kill them both. Ah! that never-ending journey, the roads that followed the roads, the years of roaming through unknown lands with one rageful thought in my heart--that of returning to Beauclair, of finding that man and that woman once more, and of planting in their flesh the knife I had used so clumsily! But you met me, amused me, and just now I trembled before them, and retreated like a coward, when I saw them looking so beautiful, so great, so radiant!'

Bonnaire shuddered on hearing that confession. Already on the previous night he had apprehended a crime. But now, at the sight of the woeful wretch's collapse, he felt stirred by pity. 'Come, come, you unhappy being,' he exclaimed, 'come and sleep again to-night at my house. To-morrow we'll see----'

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

'But you cannot start off at this hour--you are too tired, too weak. Why won't you stay with us? You will become calmer, you will know our happiness.'

'No, no! I must start at once, at once. The potter said the truth, I'm not of the sort to make one of you.' And like some damned and tortured wretch full of suppressed wrath Ragu added: 'Your happiness--why, I can't bear the sight of it! It would make me suffer too much!'

Bonnaire then ceased to insist; secret horror and uneasiness had come over him also. In silence he led Ragu to his house again, and the other, unwilling even to wait till the end of the meal, took up his wallet and his staff. Not a word was exchanged between them, not even a gesture of farewell. Bonnaire watched the miserable old man go off with tottering steps, and vanish at last, far away in the night, which was gradually falling.

It was impossible, however, for Ragu to lose sight of festive Beauclair in a moment. He slowly went up the Brias gorge, and at each step climbed higher and higher among the rocks of the Bleuse Mountains. Before long he was above the town, the whole of which on turning round he once more beheld. The sky, of a dark yet pure blue, was glittering with stars. And, beneath the sweetness of the lovely June night, the town spread out like another stretch of sky, swarming, as it were, with innumerable little planets--the thousands and thousands of electric lamps which had just been lighted on the banquet tables and amidst the greenery. Once more then Ragu beheld those tables, outlined, so to say, with fire, and thus emerging victoriously from the darkness. They spread along without end till they filled the whole space below him. And he could hear laughter and singing arising, and still and ever behold that giant festival of a whole people, gathered together at table in one sole brotherly family.

Then he once more sought to flee the sight, and ascended still higher; but when he next turned round, he again saw the city glowing yet more brightly than before. He went higher still, he ever and ever climbed upward, but at each further ascent, each time that he turned round the city seemed to have grown, till at last it spread over the entire plain, becoming like the very heavens with its infinite expanse of sombre blue and glittering stars. The sounds of laughter and of song reached him more and more distinctly; it was as if the whole great human family were celebrating the joy of work, upon the fruitful earth. Then, for the last time, he again set out, and walked for hours and for hours until he became lost in the darkness.

V

Yet other years rolled by, and death, necessary death, the good helpmate of eternal life, performed his work, carrying off one by one those who had accomplished their tasks. Bourron was the first to go, followed by his wife Babette, who retained her good humour to the last. Then came the turn of Petit-Da and that of Ma-Bleue, whose blue eyes partook of the infinite of the blue heavens. Lange died too, whilst putting the finishing touch to a last little figure, a delightful barefooted girl, the very image of the Barefeet he had loved. Then Nanet and Nise went off, exchanging a last kiss, whilst still young; and finally Bonnaire succumbed like a hero amidst the stir of work one day when he had repaired to the factory to see a new giant hammer, whose every stroke forged a great piece of metal-work.

Of all their generation, of all the founders and creators of triumphant Beauclair, Luc and Jordan alone remained, loved and surrounded with the affectionate attentions of Josine, Sœurette, and Suzanne. It seemed as if the three women, whose health and courage in their old age were marvellous, lived on simply to be the helpmates and nurses of the men. Since Luc had scarcely been able to walk, his legs gradually failing him till he was almost fastened to his arm-chair, Suzanne had come to reside in his house, lovingly sharing with Josine the glory of waiting upon him. He was more than eighty now, of unchangeable gaiety and in full possession of his intelligence--quite young indeed, as he said with a laugh, had it not been for those wretched legs of his which were becoming like lead. And in the same way Sœurette did not quit her brother Jordan, who now never left his laboratory, but worked there in the day-time and slept there at night. He was Luc's elder by ten years, and had retained at ninety the slow and methodical activity to which he was indebted for the accomplishment of such a vast amount of work--ever seemingly on the point of expiring, but introducing such logic and such well-reasoned determination into his labour, that he was still working when the sturdiest toilers of his generation had long been sleeping in the grave.

He had often said in his weak little voice: 'People die because they're willing; one doesn't die when one still has something to do. My health is very bad, but all the same I shall live to a good old age, I shall only die on the day when my work is finished. You'll see, you'll see! I shall know when the time has come, and I will warn you, my good friends, saying: "Good-night, my day's over, I'm going to sleep now."'

Thus Jordan still worked because in his estimation his work was not yet finished. He lived on, wrapped in rugs; his drinks were warmed in order that he might not catch cold, and he took long rests on a couch between the brief hours which he was able to devote to his researches. Two or three such hours sufficed him, however, for the accomplishment of a considerable amount of work, in such a methodical manner did he exert himself. Sœurette, all attention and abnegation, was like his second self, at once a nurse, a secretary, and a preparator, allowing nobody to approach and disturb him. On the days, moreover, when his hands were too weak for any exertion, it was she who carried out his thoughts for him, becoming as it were a prolongation of his own life.

To Jordan's thinking his work would only be completed when the new city's supply of beneficent electricity should be as unlimited as the inexhaustible water of the rivers, or the air which one can breathe in all freedom. During the past sixty years he had accomplished a great deal of work tending to that solution. He had diminished the cost of electricity by burning coals when they quitted the pit, and then despatching the electric force he obtained by cable to numerous factories. And after long researches he had devised a new appliance by which he even transformed the calorical energy contained in coal into electrical energy, without mechanical energy having to be employed. He had in this manner done away with boilers, which meant a saving of more than fifty per cent, in the cost price. The dynamos being charged direct, by the simple combustion of the coal, he had been able to work his electrical furnaces cheaply and well, revolutionise metallurgy, and provide the town with an abundance of electricity for all social and domestic purposes. Nevertheless, in his opinion it still remained too costly; he wished to have it for nothing, like the passing breeze which is at the disposal of all. Besides, a fear had come to him, born of the possibility--in fact, the certainty--that the coal mines would in time become exhausted. Before another century perhaps coal would fail one; and would not that mean the death of the world, the cessation of all industry, the suppression of the chief means of locomotion--mankind reduced to immobility, a prey to the cold, like some big body whose blood has ceased to circulate? It was with growing anxiety that Jordan saw each ton of coals burnt; that made a ton the less, he often said. And although he was so puny, feverish, racked by coughing, already with one foot in the grave, he incessantly tortured his mind in thinking of the catastrophe which threatened the future generations. He vowed that he would not die until he should have presented those generations with a flood of power, a flood of endless life, which would prove the source of their civilisation and their happiness. Thus he had set to work again, and for more than ten years already he had been working on the problem.

In the first instance Jordan had naturally thought of the waterfalls. They constituted a primitive mechanical force which had been employed successfully in mountain regions in spite of the capriciousness of the torrents, and the interruptions which dry seasons brought about. Unfortunately, the few watercourses still to be found in the Bleuse Mountains--apart from the springs utilised for the town's water-supply--did not possess the necessary energy. And, besides, no mountain spring would ever yield such a constant, regular, and abundant motive power as was necessary for his great design. Jordan therefore thought of the tides, the continual flux and reflux of the ocean, whose power, ever on the march, beats against the coasts of the continents. Scientists had already given attention to the tides, and he turned to their researches and even devised some experimental appliances. The distance of Beauclair from the sea was not an obstacle, for electrical force could already be transmitted without loss over considerable distances. But another idea haunted him, and gradually took complete possession of him, throwing him into a prodigious dream, full of the thought that if he could bring it to fulfilment he would give happiness to the whole world.

Puny and chilly as he was, Jordan had always evinced a passion for the sun. He often watched it pursuing its course. With a quivering fear of the spreading darkness he saw it set at evening, and at times he rose early in the morning in order that he might have the joy of seeing it appear again. If it should be drowned in the sea; if it should some day never reappear, what endless, icy, deadly night would fall upon mankind! Thus Jordan almost worshipped the sun, regarding it as something divine, the father of our world, the creator and regulator, which after drawing beings from the clay, had warmed them, helped them to develop and spread, and nourished them with the fruits of the earth, throughout an incalculable number of centuries. The sun was the eternal source of life since it was the source of light, heat, and motion. It reigned in its glory like a very powerful, very good, and very just king, a necessary god, without whom there would be nothing, and whose disappearance would bring about the death of all things. This being so, Jordan asked himself why should not the sun continue and complete his work? During thousands of years it had stored its beneficent heat away in the trees of which coal was made. During thousands of years the earth had preserved in its bosom that immense reserve stock of heat, which had come to us like a priceless gift at the hour when our civilisation needed new splendour. And it was to the all-helping sun that one must again apply, it was the sun which would continue giving to that which it had created, the world and man, increase of life, and truth, and justice, all the happiness indeed of which one had dreamt so long. Since the sun vanished each evening, since it disappeared at winter-time, one must ask it to leave us a plentiful share of its blaze, in order that one might without suffering await its return at dawn, and take patience during the cold seasons. The problem was at once a simple and a formidable one; it was necessary to address oneself direct to the sun, capture some of the solar heat, and by special appliances transform it into electricity, of which immense quantities must be stored in air-tight reservoirs. In this fashion one would always have an unlimited source of power, of which one might dispose as one pleased. The rays would be harvested during the scorching days of summer, and stored away in endless granaries. And when the nights grew long, when winter arrived with its darkness and its ice, there would be light and warmth and motion for all mankind. That electrical power, ravished from the all-creating sun and domesticated by man, would then at last prove his docile and ever-ready servant, relieving him of much exertion, and helping him to make of work not only gaiety and health, and just apportionment of wealth, but the very law and cult of life.

The dream which possessed Jordan had already occupied other minds. Scientists had succeeded in devising little appliances which captured solar heat and transformed it into electricity, but in infinitesimal quantities, the instruments being suited merely for laboratory experiments. It was necessary to be able to operate on a large scale, and in a thoroughly practical manner, in order to fill the huge reservoirs which would be needed for the requirements of a whole nation. For years, then, Jordan was seen superintending the building--in the old park of La Crêcherie--of some strange appliances, species of towers, whose purpose could not be divined. For a long while he would not speak out, but kept the secret of his researches from everybody. In fine weather, during the hours when he felt strong enough, he repaired with the short, slow step of a weak old man to the new works which he had set up, and shut himself up inside them with some chosen men. And in spite of repeated failures he clung to his task, wrestled with it, and ended by overcoming the sovereign planet--he, the little hard-working ant, whom too hot a sunray would have killed. Never was there greater heroism, never did the pursuit of an idea afford the spectacle of a loftier victory over the natural forces--forces which yesterday had been deadly thunderbolts for man, and which to-day were conquered, subjected to his service. He succeeded in solving the problem, the great and glorious sun parted with some little of that inexhaustible glow with which, never cooling, it has warmed the earth through so many centuries. After some final trials new works were definitively planned and erected, and supplied Beauclair throughout a whole year with as much electricity as its inhabitants required, even as the springs of the mountains supplied them with water. Nevertheless, an annoying defect was observed: the loss from the reservoirs remained very large, and some last improvements had to be devised, a means of storing without fear of diminution the necessary winter reserve of power, in such wise that another sun, as it were, might be lighted above the town throughout the long cold nights of December.

Again did Jordan set to work. He sought, he struggled still, resolved upon keeping alive until his task should be completed. His strength declined, he was at last unable to go out, and had to rest content with sending his orders to the works respecting the final, long-debated ameliorations. In this fashion several months went by. Shut up in his laboratory he there perfected his work, resolved to die there on the day when this work should be ended. And that day arrived: he found a means of preventing all loss, of rendering his reservoirs absolutely impermeable, capable of holding their store of electric force for a long period. And then he had but one desire--to bid farewell to his work, embrace his friends, and return again into universal life.

The month of October had come, and the sun was still gilding the last leaves with warm, clear gold. Jordan requested Sœurette to have him carried in an arm-chair, for the last time, to the works where the new reservoirs had been installed. He wished to gaze upon his creation, to make sure that enough sunshine was stored away to enable Beauclair to wait for the return of spring. And so one delightful afternoon he was taken to the works, and spent two hours in them, inspecting everything and regulating the action of the appliances. The works were built at the very foot of the Bleuse Mountains, in a part of the old park which looked towards the south, and which had formerly been an overflowing paradise of fruit and flowers. There were towers rising above large buildings with long roofs of steel and glass, but nothing connected with the work could be seen from the outside, for all the conducting cables passed underground.

At last, by way of finishing his visit, Jordan bade his bearers halt for a moment in the central courtyard, where he gave a long supreme glance around him at that nucleus of a new world, endowed with the source of eternal life, his creation, the passion of his whole life. And finally he turned towards Sœurette, who, never quitting him, had followed his arm-chair step by step. 'Well,' said he with a smile, 'it's finished, and it seems quite satisfactory; so now I can go off. Let us return to the house, sister.'

He was very gay, radiant like a toiler who thinks that he will at last be able to rest since his work is done. However, his sister, hoping that he might benefit by the sunshine, told the men carrying the arm-chair not to hurry, but to go back to the house by a somewhat roundabout way. And thus it happened that on emerging from one of the paths Jordan suddenly found himself in front of the pavilion where Luc still dwelt, reduced like his friend to immobility, since he had lost the use of his legs. For some months now the two friends had not seen one another. They could only correspond, obtain news of each other through their dear nurses, their guardian angels, who were ever coming and going between them. And a final desire, the last desire of his heart, suddenly upbuoyed the sinking Jordan.

'Oh! sister, I beg you,' said he, 'let them stop and place my chair yonder, under that tree, at the edge of the tall grass. And go up to Luc at once and tell him that I am here, at his door, waiting for him.'

Sœurette hesitated for a moment, feeling somewhat anxious at the thought of all the emotion which such an interview would bring with it. 'But Luc is like yourself, my friend,' she said, 'he cannot stir. How would you have him come downstairs?'

The gay smile which revived the brilliancy of Jordan's eyes, again appeared upon his face.

'My bearers will carry him down, sister,' he replied. 'Since I have come so far in my arm-chair he can surely come here in his.' And he added tenderly: 'It is so pleasant here, we can have a last chat together, and bid one another goodbye. How can we part for ever without embracing?'

It was impossible for Sœurette to refuse his request any longer, so she went into the pavilion for Luc. Jordan waited quietly amidst the caress of the declining sun; and his sister soon returned, announcing that his friend was coming. Deep was the emotion when Luc appeared, likewise carried by the men in his arm-chair. He was brought towards the greenery, followed by Josine and Suzanne, who did not leave him. At last the bearers deposited him near Jordan, the chairs touching one another, and the two friends were then able to press each other's hands.

'Ah! my good Jordan, how much I thank you,' said Luc; 'how kind of you to have thought of bringing us together in order that we might see one another again and bid one another a last good-bye!'

'You would have done the same, my dear Luc,' Jordan answered. 'As I was passing and you were there it was natural that we should meet for the last time on this grass, under one of our dear trees, whose shade we have loved so well.'

The tree under which they sat was a big silvery lime-tree, a superb giant that had already shed its leaves. But the sunshine still gilded it delightfully, and the golden dust of the planet fell in a warm rain athwart its branches. The evening too was exquisite, an evening of intense peacefulness, fraught with the sweetest charm. A broad sun ray enveloped the two old men as with a loving splendour, whilst the three women, standing in the rear, watched over them with solicitude.

'Just think of it, my friend!' Jordan resumed. 'For so many years past whilst we have been pursuing parallel tasks, our lives have been mingled. I should have gone off full of remorse if I had not again excused myself for having placed such little faith in your work when you first came to me and asked my help to build the future city of Justice. I was at that time convinced that you would encounter defeat.'

Luc began to laugh: 'Yes, yes, as you said, my friend, political, economical, and social struggles were not your business. No doubt there has been much futile agitation among men. But was one to abstain on that account from taking part in what went on, was one to allow evolution to take place as it listed, and refrain from hastening the hour of deliverance? All the compromises--often necessary ones--all the base devices to which the leaders of men have stooped, have had their excuse in the double march which they have at times helped mankind to effect.'

Jordan hastily interrupted him: 'You were right, my friend,' said he, 'and you have proved it magnificently. Your battle here has created, hastened the advent of a new world. Perhaps you have snatched a hundred years from human wretchedness. At all events this new town of Beauclair, where more justice and happiness now flower, proclaims the excellence of your mission, the beneficent glory of your achievement. I am with you entirely, you see, in mind and in heart, and I do not wish to quit you without telling you once more how thoroughly you won me over to your work, and with what growing affection I watched you whilst you were realising so many great things. You were often an example for me.'

But Luc protested: 'Oh! do not let us speak of any example of mine, my friend. It was you who ever gave me one, the loftiest, the most magnificent! Remember my lassitude, my occasional attacks of weakness, whereas I always found you erect, endowed with more courage, more and more faith in your work, even on the days when everything seemed to be crumbling around you. That which made you invincible was that you believed solely in work, in which, alone, you set health and the one reason for living and doing. And your own work became your very heart and brain, the blood pulsing in your veins, the thought ever on the alert in the depths of your mind. Your work alone existed for you, building itself up with all the life that you bestowed on it, hour by hour. And what an imperishable monument, what a gift of splendour and happiness you will leave to mankind! I might never have been able to carry out my own work, as a builder of towns, and leader of men, and at all events it would as yet be as nothing, had it not been for yours.'

Silence fell, and some birds flew by, whilst through the bare branches of the lime-tree the autumn sunshine streamed more gently as evening advanced. Sœurette, in her motherly fashion, became anxious, and drew Jordan's rug over his knees, whilst Josine and Suzanne bent over Luc, fearing lest he should tire himself.

But the latter replied to Jordan: 'Science remains the great revolutionary. You told me so at the outset, and every forward step in our long lives has shown me how right you were. Would our town of Beauclair, now all comfort and solidarity, have been possible as yet if you had not placed at its disposal that electrical power which has become the necessary agent of all work, all social life? Science, truth, will alone emancipate man, make him master of his destiny, and give him sovereignty over the world by reducing the natural forces to the status of obedient servants. Whilst I was building, my friend, you gave me what was needed to infuse life into my stones and mortar.'

'It is true, no doubt, that science will free man,' Jordan quietly replied in his weak little voice, 'for at bottom truth is the one powerful artisan of fraternity and justice. And I'm going off, feeling well pleased with myself, for I've just paid my last visit to our factory, and it is working now as I desired it to work, for the relief and felicity of all.'

He went on giving explanations and instructions respecting the working of the new appliances, the employment of those reservoirs of force, as if indeed he were dictating his last will and testament to his friend. Electricity already cost nothing, and was so abundant that it might be given to the inhabitants of Beauclair in whatever measure they desired, like the streams whose flood was inexhaustible; like the air which came freely from the four corners of the heavens. And given in this wise electricity was life.

In every public edifice and private house, even the most modest, light, heat, and motive power were distributed without counting. It was only necessary to turn on a few switches and the house was illumined and warmed, food was cooked, and various trade and household appliances were set working. All sorts of ingenious little mechanisms were being invented for household requirements, relieving women of the work which they had formerly done, substituting mechanical action for manual toil. In a word, from the housewife to the factory-worker, the ancient human beast of burden had been altogether relieved of physical exertion and useless suffering; a subjugated and domesticated natural force now replacing the old-time toilers and performing all the work allotted to it, in silence and cleanliness, with merely an attendant to check its action. And this also meant relief and freedom for the mind, a moral and intellectual rise for every brain, hitherto weighed down by excessive work, badly apportioned and fraught with savage iniquity for the greater number of the disinherited, whom it had plunged in ignorance, baseness and crime. And it was not slothful idleness that now reigned in the place of excessive toil, but work into which more freedom and conscience entered; man really becoming the king of work, devoting himself to the occupations he preferred, and creating more truth and beauty according to his tastes, after the few hours of general work which he gave to the community. And meantime also the unhappy domestic animals, the sad-looking horses, all the beasts used for draught, burden, and servitude were freed from the carts they had been compelled to drag, the millstones they had turned, the loads they had carried, and were restored to happy life in the fields and the woods.

But the purposes for which the electric force could be used were innumerable, and each day brought with it some fresh benefit. Jordan had invented some lamps of such great power that two or three sufficed to illumine an avenue. Thus the dream of lighting another sun above Beauclair at night-time would assuredly be fulfilled. Some huge and splendid glass houses had also been erected, in which by means of an improved system of heating, flowers, vegetables, and fruits could be easily grown at all seasons. The town was full of them, they were distributed broadcast, and winter, like night, ceased to exist. Moreover, transport and locomotion were facilitated more and more, thanks to the free motive power which was applied to an infinity of vehicles, bicycles, carriages, carts, and trains of several coaches.

'Yes, I am going off feeling well pleased,' Jordan repeated with serene gaiety. 'I've done my own work, and the general task is sufficiently well advanced to allow me to fall asleep in all peacefulness. To-morrow the secret of aerial navigation will be discovered, and man will conquer the atmosphere even as he conquered the oceans. To-morrow he will be able to correspond from one to the other end of the earth without wire or cable. Human speech, human gesture will dart round the world with the rapidity of lightning. And that indeed, my friend, is the deliverance of the nations by science, the great invincible revolutionary, who will ever bring them increase of peace and truth. You yourself long ago obliterated the frontiers, so to say, by your rails, your railway lines which have extended further and further, crossing rivers, transpiercing mountains, gathering the nations together in a closer and closer network of intercourse. And what will it be when one capital can chat in friendly fashion with another, however far away, when the same thought at the same minute occupies the attention of distant continents, and when the balloon cars travel freely through the infinite, man's common patrimony, without knowing aught of customs' tariffs? The air which we all breathe, that space which is the property of all, will prove a field of harmony, in which the men of to-morrow will assuredly become reconciled. And this is why you have always seen me so composed, my friend, so convinced of final deliverance. Men might do all they could to devour one another, religions might pile error upon error in order to retain their domination, but science was taking a step forward every day, creating more light, more brotherliness, more happiness. And by the irresistible force of truth it will at last sweep away all the dark and hateful past, liberate the minds of men, and draw their hearts closer and closer together under the great and beneficent sun, the father of us all.'

Jordan was growing tired, and his voice became very faint. Nevertheless he laughed again as he concluded: 'You see, my friend, I was as much of a revolutionist as you.'

'I know it,' Luc replied with affectionate gentleness. 'You have been my master in all things. I shall never be able to thank you sufficiently for the admirable lesson of energy you gave me by your superb faith in work.'

The sun was now fast declining, and a light quiver had passed between the branches of the great lime-tree, whence fell the planet's golden dust, now of a paler hue. Night approached, and a delightful stillness spread slowly over the tall herbage. The three women, still standing there, silent and attentive, full of respect for that supreme interview, nevertheless became anxious, and gently intervened. However, as Josine and Sœurette covered Luc, in his turn, with a rug, he said to them: 'I don't feel cold, the evening is so beautiful.'

But Sœurette turned to glance at the sun, which was about to disappear from the horizon, and Jordan following her glance, exclaimed: 'Yes, night is falling. But the sun may go to bed now--it has left some of its beneficence and power in our granaries. If it now sets the meaning is that my day is over. I am going to sleep. Good-bye, my friend.'

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

This was their farewell, full of poignant affection, simple yet wondrous grandeur. They knew that they would never more see one another, and they exchanged a last glance and spoke a few last words.

'Good-bye, my friend,' Jordan repeated. 'Do not be sad, death is good and necessary. One lives again in others, one remains immortal. We have already given ourselves to others, we have worked for them only, and we shall be born again in them, and thus enjoy our share of our work. Goodbye, my friend.'

Then Luc once again repeated: 'Good-bye, my friend, all that will remain of us will tell how much we loved and hoped. Each is born for his task, that is the sole reason of life; nature brings a fresh being into the world each time that she needs another workman. And when his day's work is over, the workman can lie down, the earth will take him again for other uses. Good-bye, my friend.'

He leant forward, for he wished to embrace Jordan; but he was unable to do so until the three affectionate women came to the help of both of them, sustaining them whilst they exchanged that last embrace. They laughed at it like children, they were full of gaiety and serenity at that moment of separation, feeling neither regret nor remorse, since they had done all their duty, all their work as men. And they had no fears, no terror of the morrow of death, certain as they were of the deep quietude in which good workmen slumber. They exchanged a long and very tender embrace, putting all the strength that remained to them into that last kiss.

'Good-bye, my dear Jordan.'

'Good-bye, my dear Luc.'

Then they spoke no more. The silence became intense and holy. The sun disappeared from the great heavens, vanishing behind the vague and distant horizon. A bird perched on the lime-tree ceased singing, and delicate shadows stole over the branches, whilst the lofty herbage, and all the park with its clumps of trees, its paths and its lawns, sank into the delightful quietude of twilight.

Then, at a sign from Sœurette, the bearers took up Jordan's chair, and slowly, gently carried him away. Luc had asked that he might be allowed to remain under the tree a little longer, and as he still sat there he watched his friend going off along a broad, straight pathway. At one moment Jordan looked round, and a last glance and a half-stifled laugh were exchanged. Then all was over, Luc saw the arm-chair disappear, whilst the park was invaded by the gathering gloom. And Jordan, on returning to his laboratory, went to bed there; and even as he had said to Luc--his work being done, his day being ended--he let death take him, dying on the morrow very peacefully, with a smile upon his lips, in Sœurette's loving arms.

Luc was destined to live five years longer in that arm-chair of his which he seldom quitted, and which was placed near a window of his room whence he could see his city spreading and growing day by day. A week after Jordan's death Sœurette came to join Josine and Suzanne, and from that day forward all three women encompassed Luc with their loving attentions. During the long hours which he spent gazing upon his happy city he often lived through the past again. He once more saw his point of departure, the distant night of insomnia when he had taken up a little book in which the doctrines of Fourier were set forth. And Fourier's ideas of genius: the honouring, the utilisation, the acceptance of the human passions as the very forces of life; the extrication of work from its prison, its ennoblement, its transformation into something attractive, into a new social code, liberty and justice being gradually won by pacific means, thanks to a confederation of capital, work, and brain power--all those ideas of genius had suddenly illumined Luc's mind and prompted him to action on the very morrow. It was to Fourier that he was indebted if he had dared to make that experiment at La Crêcherie. The first common-house with its school, the first bright clean workshops, the first dwelling-houses with their white walls smiling amidst the greenery, had all sprung from Fourierist ideas, ideas which had been left slumbering like good grain in winter fields, ever ready to germinate and flower. Even like Catholicism, the Religion of Humanity might need centuries to be firmly established. But what an evolution afterwards, what a continuous broadening of principles as love grew and the city spread! By proposing combination between capital, work, and brain power as an immediate experiment, Fourier, the evolutionist, a man of method and practicability, virtually led one first to the social organisation of the Collectivists, and afterwards even to the Libertarian dream of the Anarchists. In that association capital gradually became annihilated, and work and intelligence became the only regulators and basis of the new social compact. At the end lay the disappearance of ordinary trade, and the suppression of money, the first a cumbersome cogwheel levying toll and consuming energy, the second a fictitious value, which became useless in a community in which all contributed to produce prodigious wealth, that circulated in continual exchanges. And thus, starting with Fourier's experiment, the new city was fated to transform itself at each fresh advance, marching on to more and more liberty and equity, and conquering on its way all the socialists of the various hostile sects, the Collectivists and even the Anarchists, and finally grouping them in a brotherly people, reconciled amidst the fulfilment of their common ideal, the kingdom of heaven set at last upon the earth.

And that was the admirable spectacle which Luc ever had before his eyes, a spectacle summed up in that city of happiness whose bright roofs spread out among the trees before his window. The march which the first generation, imbued with all the ancient errors, spoilt by iniquitous surroundings, had begun so painfully, amidst so many obstacles and so much hatred, was pursued with a joyous easy step by the ensuing generations which the new schools and workshops had created. They were attaining to heights which had once been declared inaccessible. Thanks to continuous change, the children and the children's children seemed to have hearts and brains different from those of their forerunners, and brotherliness became easy to them in a community in which the happiness of each was virtually compounded of the happiness of all.

With trade, theft had disappeared. With money, all criminal cupidity had vanished. Inheritance no longer existed, and so no more privileged idlers were born, and men no longer butchered each other to benefit by somebody's will. What was the use of hating one another, of being envious of one another, of seeking to acquire somebody's property by ruse or force, when the public fortune belonged to one and all, each being born, living and dying, in as good circumstances as his neighbour? Crime became senseless, idiotic, and the whole savage apparatus of repression and chastisement, instituted to protect the thefts of a few rich beings from the rebellion of the wretched multitude, had fallen to pieces like something useless, gendarmes and law courts and prisons alike being swept away. Living among that people who knew not the horrors of war, who obeyed the one law of work, with a solidarity simply based upon reason and individual interest, properly understood, a people, too, saved from the monstrous falsehoods of religion, well informed, knowing the truth and bent on justice, one realised how possible became the alleged 'utopia' of universal happiness. Since the passions, instead of being combated and stifled, had been cultivated like the very forces of life, they had lost all criminal bitterness, and had become social virtues, a continuous flowering of individual energies. Legitimate happiness lay in the development and education of the five senses and the sense of love. The long efforts of mankind ended in the free expansion of the individual, and in a social system satisfying every need, man being man in his entirety, and living life in its entirety also. And the happy city had thus secured realisation in the practice of the religion of life, the religion of humanity freed from dogmas, finding in itself its _raison d'être_, its end, its joy, and its glory.

But Luc particularly beheld the triumph of Work, the saviour, creator, regulator of the world. He had at the very outset desired to destroy the iniquitous wage-system, and had dreamt of a new compact which would allow of a just apportionment of wealth. But what a deal of ground it had been necessary to traverse! In this respect again the evolution had started from Fourier, for to him could be traced the association of workers, the varied, attractive, limited labour of the workshops, the groups of workers forming successive series, parting to meet again and mingling with all the constant play of free organs--the play of life itself. The germs of the Libertarian Commune may be found in Fourier, for if he repudiated brutal revolution, and began by making use of the existing mechanism of society, his doctrines tended in their result to that society's destruction. No doubt the wage-system had long lingered at the works of La Crêcherie, passing through various stages of association, division of profits, a percentage of interest in the common toil. At last it had been transformed in such a manner as to satisfy the Collectivists, realising their formula, a regulated circulation of 'vouchers for work.' Nevertheless it still remained the wage-system, attenuated, disguised, but refusing to die. And the doctrine of the Libertarian Commune alone had swept it away in the course of a last advance, that of deliverance by liberty and justice in their entirety, that chimera of other days, that unity and harmony which now really lived. At present no authority remained, the new social compact was based solely on the bond of necessary work, accepted by all, and constituting both law and cult. An infinity of groups practised it, starting with the old groups of the building, clothing, and metal trades, the industrial workers and the tillers of the soil, but multiplying and varying incessantly, in such wise as to be adapted to all individual desires as well as to all the needs of the community. Nothing hindered individual expansion, each citizen formed part of as many groups as he desired, passed from the cultivation of the soil to factory work, gave his time as best suited his faculties and his desires. And there was no longer any contention between classes, since only one class existed, a whole nation of workers, equally rich, equally happy, educated to the same level, with no difference either in attire, or in dwelling-place, or in manners and customs. Work was king, the only guide, only master, and only deity, instinct with sovereign nobility, since it had redeemed mankind when it was dying of falsehood and injustice, and had restored it to vigour and to the joy of life, and to love, and to beauty.

Luc laughed gaily when the morning breeze wafted towards him all the sonorous gaiety of his city. How good, easy, and delightful was the work performed there! It lasted only a few hours each day, and so much of it, the most delicate as well as the mightiest task, was performed by the new machinery which completed man's conquest of nature and loaded him with wealth and abundance. Freed from long hours of rough toil, man was the better able to exert his mind; art and science soared; the level of current mentality was ever rising; great intelligence ceased to be an exception, and men of genius sprang up in crowds.

The science of alimentation had already been revolutionised by chemistry, the earth might have yielded no more wheat, no more olives, no more grapes, and yet enough bread, oil, and wine for the whole city would have come from its laboratories. In physics, in electricity especially, fresh inventions were ever and ever enlarging the domain of the possible, and endowing men with the power of gods, knowing all, seeing all, and capable of all. Then came the flight of art, the growth and diffusion of beauty in every respect, an extraordinary florescence of all the arts, now that the soul of the multitude throbbed in every soul, and that life was lived with all its passions freed, love given and received in its entirety. Inspired by the universal loving kindness, music became the very voice of the happy people, through and for whom musicians found the most sublime chants, in whose continual harmony theatres, workshops, dwellings, and streets were ever steeped. And for the people architects built vast and superb palaces, made in its own image, of a size and a majesty at once varied and yet all one, like the multitude itself, all the charming variations of thousands of individualities finding expression in them. Then sculptors peopled the gardens and museums with living bronze and marble; and painters decorated the public edifices, the railway stations, the markets, the libraries, the theatres, and the halls for study and diversion with scenes borrowed from daily life. Writers moreover gave to that innumerable people, who all read them, vast, strong, and powerful works, born of them, created for them. Genius expanded, acquiring fresh strength from increase of knowledge and freedom among the community; never before had it displayed such splendour. The narrow, cramped, aristocratic, hot-house literature of the past had been swept away by the literature of humanity, poems overflowing with life, which all had helped to create with their blood, and which returned to the hearts of all.

Full of serenity, without fear for the future, Luc watched his town growing like a beautiful being, endowed with eternal youth. It had descended from the Brias gorges, between the two promontories of the Bleuse Mountains, and was now spread over the meadow-land of La Roumagne. In fine weather its white house-fronts smiled amidst the verdure without a single puff of smoke besmirching the pure atmosphere, for there were no chimneys left, electricity having everywhere replaced coal and wood for heating purposes. The light silk canopy of the broad blue sky spread over all, immaculate, without a speck of soot. Thus in aspect the town remained a new one, bright and gay under the refreshing breezes, whilst on all sides one heard the carolling of water, the crystalline streaming of springs, whose purity brought health and perpetual delight. The population steadily increased, fresh houses were built, fresh gardens were planted. A happy people, free and brotherly, becomes a centre of attraction, and thus the little towns of the neighbourhood, Saint-Cron, Formerie, and Magnolles, had found it necessary to follow the example of Beauclair, and had ended by becoming so many prolongations of the original city. It had been sufficient to make an experiment on a small scale, and by degrees the _arrondissement_, the department, the whole region was won over. Irresistible happiness was on the march, and nothing will be able to withstand the force of happiness when men possess a clear and decisive perception of it. Mankind has known but one struggle through the ages, the struggle for happiness, which is to be found beneath every form of religion, every form of government. Egotism is merely an individual effort to acquire the greatest possible sum of happiness for self; and why should not each set his egotism in treating his fellows as brothers when he becomes convinced that the happiness of each rests in the happiness of all? If there was contention between different interests in the past, it was because the old social pact opposed them one to the other, making warfare the very soul of society. But let it be demonstrated that work reorganised will apportion wealth justly, and that the passions, playing freely, will lead to harmony and unity, and then peace will at once ensue, and happiness will be established in a brotherly contract of solidarity. Why should one fight one against the other, when interests cease to clash? If all the desperate, pain-fraught exertions of generations, the prodigious sum of efforts, blood, and tears that mankind has given to mutual slaughter throughout so many centuries, had only been devoted to the conquest of the world, the subjugation of the natural forces, man would long since have been the absolute, happy sovereign of creatures and things. When humanity at last became conscious of its imbecile dementia, when man ceased to be wolfishly inclined towards his brother, and resolved to devote some of the genius and wealth hitherto squandered in mutual annihilation, to the common work of happiness, the mastery of the elements, on that day the nations first started on their march towards the happy city. And no! it is not true that a nation having its every need satisfied, having to battle no longer for existence, would thereby gradually lose the strength it requires to live, and sink into torpor and catalepsy. The human dream will always be without a limit, there will always remain much of the Unknown to be conquered. Each time a new craving is contented, desire will give birth to another, the satisfaction of which will exalt men and make them heroes of science and beauty. Desire is infinite, and if men long battled together in order to steal happiness one from the other, they will battle side by side to increase it, to make it an immense banquet, resplendent with joy and glory, vast enough to satiate the passions of thousands of millions of human creatures. And there will be only heroes left, and each fresh child born into the world will receive as his birthgift the whole earth, the unbounded expanse of heaven, and the paternal sun, the source of immortal life.

As Luc gaily contemplated his triumphant town he often repeated that love alone had created all the prodigies he beheld. He had sown the seed, and now he reaped inexhaustible harvests of kindliness and brotherliness. At the very outset he had felt that it was necessary to found his city by and for woman if it was to prove fruitful and for ever desirable and beautiful. Woman saved--Josine set in her due place of beauty, dignity, and tenderness--was not that the symbol of the future alliance, the union of the sexes, ensuring social peace, and free and just life in common? Then, too, the new system of education, the sexes being reared together and acquiring the same knowledge, had brought them to a complete understanding, and made them sincerely desirous of attaining to the one object of life, that object which was reached by loving a great deal in order that one might be loved a great deal in return. True wisdom lay in creating happiness, it was thus that one logically became happy oneself. And now love chose freely; no law, mutual consent alone, regulated marriage. A young man, a young girl had known one another since their schooldays, had passed through the same workshops together, and when they bestowed themselves one on the other, that bestowal was simply like the florescence of their long intimacy. They gave themselves to one another for life, long and faithful unions predominating; they grew old together, even as they had grown up together, in a bestowal of their whole beings, their rights being equal, their love equal also. Yet their liberty remained entire, separation was always possible for those who ceased to agree, and their offspring remained with one or the other, as they decided, or when difficulties supervened in the charge of the community. The bitter duel of man and woman, all the questions which had so long set the sexes one against the other, like savage, irreconcilable enemies, came to an end in that solution: woman free in all respects, woman the free companion of man, resuming her position as an equal, as an indispensable factor in the union of love. She had a right to abstain from marrying, to live as a man, to play a man's part as far as she desired, if she chose; but why should she deny desire, and set herself apart from life? Only one thing is sensible and beautiful, and that is life in its entirety. And so the natural order of things had come about, peace was signed between the reconciled sexes, each finding happiness in the happiness of a common home tasting at last all the delights of the bond of love, which was freed from the baseness of pecuniary and social considerations. One could no longer sell himself for the other's dowry, families could no longer barter their sons and daughters like mere merchandise.

Thus the fulness of love reigned in the community. The sense of love, developed and purified, became the perfume, the flame, the focus of existence. It was widespread, general, universal love, springing from the mated couple, and passing to the mother, the father, the children, the relations, the neighbours, the citizens, the men and women of the whole world in ever-broadening waves, a sea of love which ended by bathing the entire earth. Loving kindness was like the pure air on which every breast fed; there remained but one breath of brotherly affection, and that alone had at last brought about the long-dreamt-of unity, the divine harmony. Humanity--equilibrated like the planets, by force of attraction, by the law of justice, solidarity and love--would henceforth journey happily through the eternal infinite. And such was the ever-recurring harvest, the immense harvest of tenderness and kindliness, which Luc each morning saw arising from all sides; from all the furrows which he had sown so abundantly; from his entire city, where for so many years he had cast the good seed by the handful into the schools, into the workshops, into every home, and even into every heart.

'Look! look!' he said with a laugh some morning when Josine, Sœurette, and Suzanne remained near his arm-chair before the open window. 'Look, there are trees which have flowered since last night, and it seems as if kisses were winging their flight, like song-birds, from some of the roofs. There, yonder, both on the right and on the left, love flaps his wings, as it were, in the rising sunlight.'

The three women joined in his laughter, and jested in a tender way to please him. 'Certainly,' Josine would say, 'on that side, above that house with the blue tiles spangled with white stars, there is a great quiver of the sunlight, telling of internal rapture. That must be the house of some newly-wedded pair.'

'And straight before us,' said Sœurette, 'see how the window-panes are flashing with the splendour of a rising planet, in that house-front where the faïence ornaments are decorated with roses! Assuredly a child has been born there.'

'And on all sides, over all the dwellings, over the whole town the rays are pouring,' said Suzanne in her turn. 'They form sheaves of wheat, a field of prodigious fertility. Is it not the peace springing from the love of all that grows and is harvested there each day?'

Luc listened to them with rapture. What a delightful reward was that which he himself had won from love, which had surrounded him with the sublime affection of those three women, whose presence filled his last days with perfume and brilliancy! They were full of solicitude, infinitely good, infinitely loving, with serene eyes which ever brought him joy in life, and gentle hands which sustained him to the very threshold of the grave. And they were very old and quite white, light and aerial like souls, like gay, active, pure flames, glowing with youthful, eternal passion. He lived on; and they lived on also, and were like his force, his activity and intelligence, healthy and strong as they were in spite of everything, coming and going for him when he himself could no longer move, like guardians, housewives, and companions, who prolonged and broadened his life far beyond the usual limits.

At seventy-eight years of age Josine remained the _amorosa_, the Eve, who had long ago been saved from error and suffering. Extremely slim, suggesting a dry, pallid flower that had retained its perfume, she had preserved her supple gracefulness, her delicate charm. In the bright sunlight her white hair seemed to recover some of its golden hue, the sovereign gold of youth. And Luc adored her still, as on the distant day when he had succoured her, setting in his love for her his love for the whole suffering people, for all tortured women; choosing her, indeed, as the most wretched, the most dolorous, in order that with her--should he save her--he might likewise save all the disinherited of the world whom shame and hunger were clutching at the throat. Even nowadays it was religiously that he kissed her mutilated hand, the wound dealt by iniquitous labour, in the prison of the wage-system, from which his compassion and love for her had helped him to extricate the workers. He had not remained unfruitful in his mission of redemption and deliverance; he had felt the need of woman, the necessity of being strong and complete in order to redeem his brothers. It was the mated couple, the fruitful spouse, that had given birth to the new people. When she had borne him children his work itself had begun to create, had become lasting. And on her side she likewise adored him, with the adoration of their first meeting, a flame of tender gratitude, a gift of her whole person, a passion and a desire for the infinite of love, whose inextinguishable flame age had not weakened.

Sœurette, born the same year as Luc, her eighty-fifth birthday being near at hand, was the most active of the three women, on her feet, busy the whole day long. It had long seemed as if she had ceased to grow older. Small of frame, shrunken even, she had nevertheless been beautified by gentle age. So dark, so thin, so graceless in former times, she had become a delightful little old woman, a little white mouse, whose eyes were full of light. Long ago, in the distressing crisis of her love for Luc, amidst her grief at loving and remaining unloved, her good brother Jordan had told her that she would become resigned, and would sacrifice her passion to the love of others. And each day she had indeed become more and more resigned, her renunciation proving at last a source of pure joy, a force of divine delight. She still loved Luc, she loved him in each of his children and grandchildren, with whom she had long assisted Josine. And she loved him with a deeper and deeper love, freed from all egotism, a chaste flame, that glowed with sisterly affection and motherliness. The delicate attentions, the discreet comforts which she had lavished on her brother, were now bestowed on her friend. She was always on the watch, in order to make his every hour delight. And all her happiness lay in that: to feel how greatly he himself was attached to her, to end almost a century of life in that passionate friendship, which was as sweet as love itself.

Suzanne, now eight-and-eighty years of age, was the eldest, the most serious, the most venerable of the women. Slender of figure, she remained upright, showing a tender countenance, whose only charm, as in days before, rested in its expression of kindliness, indulgence, and sterling good sense. But nowadays she could scarcely walk, and her compassionate eyes alone expressed her craving to interest herself in others and expend her strength in good work. As a rule she remained seated near Luc, keeping him company, whilst Josine and Sœurette quietly and attentively trotted around them. She, on her side, had loved Luc so tenderly in her sad younger days, loved him with a consoling love, of which she had long remained ignorant. She had given herself without knowing it amidst her dream of a hero whom she would have liked to encourage, assist with her affection. And on the day when her heart had spoken, the hero was already in another's arms, and only room for a friend remained at his hearth. She had been that friend for numerous years now, and had found perfect peace in the communion of heart and mind in which she had lived with the man who had become her brother. Doubtless, too, as in the case of Sœurette, if that friendship proved so delightful, it was because it had sprung from a brasier of love, and retained its eternal fire.

Thus Luc, very aged, glorious, and handsome, lived his last days encompassed by the love of those three women, who also were very old, glorious, and beautiful. His eighty-five years had failed to bend his lofty figure, he remained healthy and strong, save for that stiffening of his legs which kept him at his window like a happy spectator of the city he had founded. His hair had not fallen from above his lofty, towering brow, it had simply whitened, surrounding his head with a great white mane, like that of some old, resting lion. And his last days were brightened and perfumed by the adoration with which Josine, Sœurette, and Suzanne surrounded him. He had loved all three of them, and still loved them with that vast love of his, whence flowed so much desire, so much brotherliness and kindness. But signs appeared. As with Jordan, no doubt, the work being done, Luc was soon to die. Somnolence came over him, like a foretaste of the well-earned repose whose advent he awaited with joyous serenity. It was with good spirits that he saw death approaching, for he knew it to be necessary and gentle, and he had no need of any mendacious promise of a heaven in order to accept it with a brave heart. Heaven henceforth was set upon the earth, where the greatest possible sum of truth and justice realised the ideal, the entirety of human happiness. Each being remained immortal in the generations born of him, the torrent of love was increased by each fresh love that came into being, and rolled and rolled along, assuring eternity to all who had lived, loved, and created. And Luc knew that, although he might die, he would continually be born anew in the innumerable men whose lives he had desired to see improved, more fortunate. That was the only certainty of survival, and it brought him delightful peace. He had loved others so much, and had expended his strength so much for the relief of their wretchedness, that he found reward and beatitude in falling asleep in them, in profiting himself by his work in the bosom of generations which would ever become happier and happier.

Anxious though they felt at seeing him thus gently sinking, Josine, Sœurette, and Suzanne did not wish to be sad. They opened the windows every morning in order that the sun might enter freely, they decorated and perfumed the room with flowers, huge nosegays possessing all the brightness and aroma of youth. And knowing how attached Luc was to children, they surrounded him with a joyous party of little lads and lassies, whose fair and dark heads were like other nosegays--the flowery to-morrow, the strength and beauty of the years to come. And when all those little folk were present, laughing and playing around his arm-chair, Luc smiled at them tenderly and watched their play with an air of amusement, enraptured at heart at departing amidst such pure delight, such living hope.

Now, on the day when death, very just and very good, was to come upon Luc with the twilight, the three women, who divined its approach by the expression in the clear eyes of the grand old man, sent for his great-grandchildren, the very little ones, those who would set the most childhood, the most future promise around him in his last moments. And these children brought others, playmates and so forth, some of them their elders, and all of them descendants of the workers by whose solidarity and exertion La Crêcherie had formerly been founded. It was a charming spectacle, that sunlit room full of children and roses, and the hero, the old lion with the white mane, still cheerfully and lovingly taking an interest in the little ones. He recognised them all, named them, and questioned them.

A tall lad of eighteen, François, the son of Hippolyte Mitaine and Laure Fauchard, strove to restrain his tears as he looked at him.

'Come and shake hands with me, my handsome François,' said Luc. 'You must not be sad, you see how cheerful we all are. And be a good man. You have grown taller lately, you will make a superb sweetheart for some charming girl.'

Then came the turn of two girls of fifteen, Amélie, the daughter of Alexandre Feuillat and Clémentine Bourron, and Simonne, the daughter of Adolphe Laboque and Germaine Yvonnot. 'Ah! you at least are gay, my pretty ones,' said Luc, 'and it is right that you should be so. Come and let me kiss you on your fresh cheeks, and be always gay and beautiful, for therein lies happiness.'

Then he only recognised his own descendants, whose number was destined to multiply without cessation. Two of his grandchildren were present, a granddaughter aged eighteen, Alice, who had sprung from Charles Froment and Claudine Bonnaire, and a grandson of sixteen, Richard, who had sprung from Jules Froment and Céline Lenfant. Only the unmarried grandchildren had been invited, for the room could not have held the married ones with their wives and families. And Luc laughed yet more tenderly as he called Alice and Richard to him. 'Sly fair Alice,' said he, 'you are of an age to marry now. Choose a lad who is joyous and healthy like yourself. Ah! is it done already? Then love one another well, and may your children be as healthy and joyous as you are.--And you Richard, my big fellow, you are about to begin your apprenticeship as a bootmaker, I hear, and you also have a perfect passion for music. Well, work and sing, and be a genius!'

But at this moment he was surrounded by a stream of little ones. Three boys and a girl, all of them his grandchildren, tried to climb upon his knees. He began by taking the eldest, a boy of seven, Georges, the son of a pair of cousins, Maurice Morfain and Berthe Jollivet, Maurice being the son of Raymond Morfain and Thérèse Froment, whilst Berthe was one of the daughters of André Jollivet and Pauline Froment.

'Ah! my dear little Georges, the dear little grandson of my two daughters--Thérèse the brunette, and Pauline the blonde. Your eyes used to be like my Pauline's, but now they are becoming like those of my Thérèse. And your fresh and laughing mouth, whose is that? Is it Thérèse's or Pauline's? Give me a good kiss, a good kiss, my dear little Georges, so that you may remember me for a long, long time.'

Then came the turn of Grégoire Bonnaire, who was barely five years old. He was the son of Félicien Bonnaire and Hélène Jollivet; Félicien having sprung from Séverin Bonnaire and Léonie Gourier, and Hélène being the daughter of André Jollivet and Pauline Froment.

'Another of my Pauline's little men!' said Luc. 'Eh, my little Grégoire, isn't grandmamma Pauline very kind, hasn't she always plenty of nice things in her hands? And you love me, too, your great-grandpapa, don't you, Grégoire? And you will always wish to be good and handsome when you remember me, eh? Kiss me, give me a good kiss.'

By way of conclusion he took up the two others, Clément and Luce, brother and sister, one on his right and the other on his left knee. Clément was five and Luce two years old. They were the children of Ludovic Boisgelin and Mariette Froment. But at the thought of Ludovic and Mariette a host of memories arose, for he was the son of Paul Boisgelin and Antoinette Bonnaire, and she, the daughter of Hilaire Froment and Colette, the eldest child of Nanet and Nise. The Delaveaus, the Boisgelins, the Bonnaires mingling with the Froments, were born anew in those pure brows, that light and curly hair.

'Come, little Clément, come little Luce, my pets,' said Luc. 'If you only knew all that I recognise, all that I read in the depths of your bright eyes. You are already very good and strong, little Clément, I know it well, for grandfather Hilaire has told me, and is well pleased to hear you always laughing! And you, little Luce, my little mite who can scarcely talk, one knows that you are a brave little girl, for you never cry, but gaily stretch your chubby little hands towards the good sun. You also must kiss me, my beautiful well-loved children, the best of myself, all my strength and all my hope!'

The others had drawn near, and he would have liked to have had arms long enough to embrace and press every one of them to his heart. It was to them that he confided the future, that he bequeathed his work as to new forces which would ever enlarge it. He had always relied on the children, the future generations, to complete the work of happiness. And those dear children who had sprung from him and by whom he was so lovingly surrounded in the serene peacefulness of his last hour, what a testament of justice, truth, and kindness he left them, and with what intense passion he appointed them the executors of his will, his dream of humanity freed more and more, and dwelling together in happiness!

'Go, go, my dear children! Be good, very good, and very just with one another! Remember that you all kissed me to-day; and always love me well, and love each other well also! You will know everything some day, you will do as we have done, and it will be for your children to do as you do. Let there be plenty of work, plenty of life, and plenty of love! Meantime, my dear children, go and play, and keep full of health and gaiety!'

Josine, Sœurette, and Suzanne then wished to send the joyous band home, for fear of a noise, as they could see that Luc was growing weaker and weaker. But he would not consent to this--he desired that the children might remain near him, in order that he might gently depart amidst the joyous sounds of their laughter. It was then arranged that they should play in the garden under his window. He could thus hear and see them, and felt well pleased.

The sun--a great summer sun which made the whole town resplendent--was already sinking on the horizon. It gilded the room as with a glory, and Luc, seated in his arm-chair amidst that splendour, long remained silent, gazing the while far away. Josine and Sœurette, silent like himself, came and leant one on his right, the other on his left, whilst Suzanne, seated close by, appeared to be sharing his dream. At last, in a voice which seemed to become more and more distant, he slowly said: 'Yes, our town is yonder. Regenerated Beauclair scintillates in the pure atmosphere, and I know that the neighbouring towns--Brias, Magnolles, Formerie, and Saint-Cron--have followed us, won over by our example to the cause of all-powerful happiness. But what is becoming of the world beyond the horizon, on the other side of the Bleuse Mountains, and beyond the great dim plain of La Roumagne--what point have the provinces and nations reached in the long struggle, the difficult and bloody march towards the happy city?'

Again he became silent, full of thought. He was aware that the evolution was in progress everywhere, spreading each hour with increasing speed. From the towns the movement had gained the provinces, then the whole nation, and then the neighbouring nations; and there were no more frontiers, no more insurmountable mountains and oceans--deliverance flew from continent to continent, sweeping away governments and religions and uniting races. However, things did not on all sides take the same course. Whilst the evolution, in the form of a slow advance towards the conquest of every liberty, had progressed at Beauclair without too much battling, thanks to the experiment of association made there, on other sides it was revolution which had broken out, and blood had flowed amidst massacre and conflagration. No two neighbouring states indeed had taken the same road; it was after following the most varied and contrary paths that the nations were to meet at last in one and the same fraternal city, the metropolis of the human federation.

And Luc, as in a dream, repeated in his failing voice: 'Ah! I should like to know--yes, before quitting my work I should like to know how far the great task has now advanced. I should sleep better; I should carry yet more certainty and hope away with me.'

Silence fell again. Josine, Sœurette, and Suzanne, very old, very beautiful, and very good, were, like himself, still dreaming, with their glances wandering afar.

It was at last Josine who began: 'I have heard of things--a traveller told them me,' she said. 'In one great Republic the Collectivists became the masters of power. For years they had waged the most desperate of political battles in order to gain possession of the legislature and the government. And as they were unable to do so in legal fashion, they had recourse to a _coup d'état_ when they felt strong enough for one, and certain of substantial support among the nation. On the morrow, by laws and decrees, they put their entire programme into force. Expropriation _en masse_ began, all private wealth became the wealth of the nation, all the instruments of work reverted to the workers. No landowners, nor capitalists, nor employers were left; the State reigned alone, master of everything, both landowner and capitalist and employer, regulator and distributor of social life. But, of course, that tremendous shock, those sudden radical changes, could not take place without terrible troubles arising. The classes would not allow themselves to be dispossessed even of property they had stolen, and there were frightful outbreaks on all sides. Landowners preferred to get killed on the threshold of their estates. Other people destroyed their property, flooded mines, broke up railroads, annihilated factories and goods, whilst capitalists burnt their scrip and flung their gold into the sea. Certain houses had to be besieged, whole towns had to be taken by assault. That frightful civil war lasted for years, and the pavements of the towns became red with blood, whilst the rivers still and ever carried corpses to the ocean. Then the sovereign State experienced all sorts of difficulties in getting the new order of things to work smoothly. An hour's work became the standard of value, exchanges being facilitated by a system of vouchers. At first a statistical commission was established to watch over production and distribute products in accordance with each person's amount of work. Then other controlling offices were found necessary, and little by little an intricate organisation grew up, impeding the working of the new social system. People fell into a kind of regimentation and barrack life; never had men been penned up in smaller compartments. And yet evolution was taking place, even this was a step towards justice; for work rose to honour once more, and wealth was each day divided with more equity. At the end, assuredly, there lay the disappearance of the wage-system and of capital--the suppression of trade and money. And I have been told that this Collectivist State, ravaged by so many catastrophes, deluged with so much blood, is to-day entering the sphere of peace, coming at last to the fraternal solidarity of the free, working nations.'

Josine ceased speaking, and again relapsed into a mute contemplation of the great horizon. But Luc gently replied: 'Yes, that was one of the bloody paths, one of those which I would not follow. But now, what matters it, since it has led them to the same unity, the same harmony as our own?'

Then Sœurette, still gazing far away, as if exploring the world behind the gigantic promontories of the Bleuse Mountains, in her turn took up the tale: 'I also heard a story--some eye-witnesses told me these frightful things. They happened in a vast neighbouring empire where the Anarchists by means of bombs and shrapnel succeeded in blowing up the old social framework. The people had suffered so dreadfully that they ended by leaguing themselves with the Anarchists in order to complete the liberating work of destruction, and sweep away the last crumbs of the rotten world. For a long time the cities flared like torches in the night, amidst the howling of the old butchers of the people, who in their turn were now being slaughtered, and who did not wish to die. And this was the prophesied deluge of blood, the fruitful necessity of which had long been foretold by the prophets of Anarchy. Afterwards the new times began. The cry was no longer: "To each according to his work," but: "To each according to his needs." Man had a right to life, lodging, clothing, and daily bread. So all the wealth was heaped together and divided, people only being rationed when there was a lack of abundance. But with all mankind at work, and nature exploited scientifically and methodically, there must come incalculable produce, an immense fortune, sufficient to satisfy the appetites of all. When the thieving and parasitic society of olden time had disappeared, together with money, the source of all crimes, and the savage laws of restriction and repression which had been the sources of every iniquity, peace would reign in the Libertarian community, in which the happiness of each would be derived from the happiness of all. And there was to be no more authority of any kind, no more laws, no more government. If the Anarchists had accepted iron and fire as their instruments, believing in the sanguinary necessity of extermination as a first step, it was because they were convinced that they could not utterly destroy monarchical and religious atavism, and for ever crush the last surviving germs of authority, unless the ancient sore should be thus brutally cauterised. In order that one might not be caught in the toils again it was necessary to sever every living link with a past of error and despotism. All politics were evil and poisonous, because they were fatally compounded of compromises and bargains, in which the disinherited were duped. And the lofty, pure dream of Anarchy had sought realisation when the old world had been ruined and swept away. That dream was the broadest and the most ideal conception of a just and peaceful human race, man free in a free state of society, and each man delivered from every hindrance and shackle, living in the full enjoyment of all his senses and faculties, fully exercising his right to live and to be happy through his share in the possession of all the wealth of the earth. But then, Anarchy had gradually become merged into the Communist evolution, for in reality it was only a form of political negation, and simply differed from other kinds of socialism by its determination to throw everything down before building up afresh. It accepted association, the constitution of free groups living by exchanges, constantly circulating, expending their strength and reconstituting themselves, like the very blood of the human body; and thus the great empire where it triumphed amidst massacre and conflagration, has now joined the other freed nations in the universal federation.'

Sœurette ceased speaking and remained motionless and dreamy, with her elbow resting on the back of Luc's arm-chair. He, whose voice was thickening, slowly said: 'Yes, the Anarchists, after the Collectivists, were bound to follow the disciples of Fourier on the last day on reaching the threshold of the promised land. If the roads were different, the goal remained identical.' And after thinking a while he resumed: 'Yet, how many tears, how much blood, how many abominable wars there have been in order to win that fraternal peace which all equally desired! How many centuries of fratricidal slaughter have followed one after the other when the question was simply whether one ought to turn to right or left in order to reach happiness more quickly!'

Then Suzanne, who hitherto had remained silent, and whose eyes also had been wandering beyond the horizon, at last spoke in a voice which quivered with compassion: 'Ah! the last war, the last battle! It was so frightful that when it was over men for ever destroyed their swords and their guns. It took place during the earlier stage of the great social crises which have renewed the world, and I was told of it by men who had well nigh lost their senses amidst that supreme shock of the nations. In that crisis which distracted them, whilst they were pregnant with the future, one-half of Europe rushed upon the other half, and other continents followed them, and fleets of ships battled on all the oceans for dominion over water and earth. Not a single nation was able to remain apart, in a state of neutrality, they all dragged one another forward; and two immense armies entered into line, glowing with hereditary fury, and resolved upon exterminating one another, as if out of every two men there was one too many in the empty, barren fields. And the two huge armies of hostile brothers met in the centre of Europe, on some vast plains where millions of beings had space to murder one another. Over leagues and leagues did the troops deploy, followed by reinforcements; such a torrent of men, indeed, that the battle lasted for a month. Each day that dawned there still remained human flesh for bullets and shells. The combatants did not even take time to remove their dead; the piles of corpses formed walls, behind which new regiments ever advanced in order to get killed. And night did not stay the battle, men murdered one another in the darkness. Each time that the sun arose it illumined yet larger pools of blood, a field of carnage where death in his horrible harvesting piled the corpses of the soldiers in loftier and loftier ricks. And on all sides there was lightning, entire army corps disappeared amidst a clap of thunder. It was not necessary that the combatants should draw near or even see each other, their guns carried long miles, and threw shells which in exploding swept acres of ground bare, and asphyxiated and poisoned all around. Balloons also threw bombs from the very heavens, setting towns ablaze as they passed. Science had invented explosives and murderous engines which carried death over prodigious distances, and annihilated a whole community as suddenly as an earthquake might have done. And what a monstrous massacre showed forth on the last evening of that gigantic battle! Never before had such a huge human sacrifice smoked beneath the heavens! More than a million men lay there in the great ravaged fields, alongside the watercourses, across the meadows. One could walk for hours and hours, and one ever met a yet larger harvest of slaughtered soldiers, who lay there with their eyes wide open, and their black mouths agape, as if to cry aloud that mankind was mad! And that was the last battle, to such a degree did horror freeze every heart when men awakened from that frightful intoxication, born of greed for dominion, lust for power; whilst the conviction came to all that war was no longer possible, since science in its almightiness was destined to be the sovereign creator of life, and not the artisan of destruction.'

Then Suzanne in her turn relapsed into silence, quivering the while, but with bright eyes, radiant indeed with the peace of the future. And Luc, whose voice was becoming a mere breath, concluded: 'Yes, war is dead, the supreme _étape_ has been reached, the brotherly kiss comes after the long, rough, dolorous journey. And my day is over, I can now go to sleep.'

He spoke no more. That last minute was august and sweet. Josine, Sœurette, and Suzanne did not stir, but waited, exempt from sadness, full indeed of tender fervour in that calm room, gay with flowers and sunshine. Under the window the joyous children were still playing--one could hear the shrill cries of the very little ones, and the laughter of their elders, all the mirth of the future on the march to broader and broader joys. And then there was the friendly sun resplendent on the horizon, the sun, the fertiliser, the father, whose creative force had been captured and domesticated. And under the flaring of its rays of glory appeared the glittering roofs of triumphant Beauclair, the busy hive where by a just apportionment of this world's riches regenerated work now only created happy folk. And yet again beyond La Roumagne, and on the other side of the Bleuse Mountains, there was the coming federation of the peoples, the one sole brotherly nation, mankind at last fulfilling its destiny of truth and justice and peace.

Then, for the last time, Luc gazed around him, his glance embracing the town, the horizon, the whole earth, where the evolution which he had started was progressing, and drawing nigh to completion. The work was done, the city was founded. And Luc expired, entered into the torrent of universal love and of everlasting life.

THE END.