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in some measure a matter of temperament with her; but it was also a

matter of education. Yet, whatever that education had been, whatever

knowledge she had acquired, she had remained very womanly and very

loving. There was nothing stern or masculine about her.

"Ah, my friend," she said one day to Pierre, "if you only knew how easy

it is for me to remain happy so long as I see those I love free from any

excessive suffering. For my own part I can always adapt myself to life. I

work and content myself no matter what may happen. Sorrow has only come

to me from others, for I can't help wishing that everybody should be

fairly happy, and there are some who won't.... I was for a long time

very poor, but I remained gay. I wish for nothing, except for things that

can't be purchased. Still, want is the great abomination which distresses

me. I can understand that you should have felt everything crumbling when

charity appeared to you so insufficient a remedy as to be contemptible.

Yet it does bring relief; and, moreover, it is so sweet to be able to

give. Some day, too, by dint of reason and toil, by the good and

efficient working of life itself, the reign of justice will surely come.

But now it's I that am preaching! Oh! I have little taste for it! It

would be ridiculous for me to try to heal you with big phrases. All the

same, I should like to cure you of your gloomy sufferings. To do so, all

that I ask of you is to spend as much time as you can with us. You know

that this is Guillaume's greatest desire. We will all love you so well,

you will see us all so affectionately united, and so gay over our common

work, that you will come back to truth by joining us in the school of our

good mother nature. You must live and work, and love and hope."

Pierre smiled as he listened. He now came to Montmartre nearly every day.

She was so nice and affectionate when she preached to him in that way

with a pretty assumption of wisdom. As she had said too, life was so

delightful in that big workroom; it was so pleasant to be all together,

and to labour in common at the same work of health and truth. Ashamed as

Pierre was of doing nothing, anxious as he was to occupy his mind and

fingers, he had first taken an interest in Antoine's engraving, asking

why he should not try something of the kind himself. However, he felt

that he lacked the necessary gift for art. Then, too, he recoiled from

Francois' purely intellectual labour, for he himself had scarcely emerged

from the harrowing study of conflicting texts. Thus he was more inclined

for manual toil like that of Thomas. In mechanics he found precision and

clearness such as might help to quench his thirst for certainty. So he

placed himself at the young man's orders, pulled his bellows and held

pieces of mechanism for him. He also sometimes served as assistant to

Guillaume, tying a large blue apron over his cassock in order to help in

the experiments. From that time he formed part of the work-shop, which

simply counted a worker the more.

One afternoon early in April, when they were all busily engaged there,

Marie, who sat embroidering at the table in front of Mere-Grand, raised

her eyes to the window and suddenly burst into a cry of admiration: "Oh!

look at Paris under that rain of sunlight!"

Pierre drew near; the play of light was much the same as that which he

had witnessed at his first visit. The sun, sinking behind some slight

purple clouds, was throwing down a hail of rays and sparks which on all

sides rebounded and leapt over the endless stretch of roofs. It might

have been thought that some great sower, hidden amidst the glory of the

planet, was scattering handfuls of golden grain from one horizon to the

other.

Pierre, at sight of it, put his fancy into words: "It is the sun sowing

Paris with grain for a future harvest," said he. "See how the expanse

looks like ploughed land; the brownish houses are like soil turned up,

and the streets are deep and straight like furrows."

"Yes, yes, that's true," exclaimed Marie gaily. "The sun is sowing Paris

with grain. See how it casts the seed of light and health right away to

the distant suburbs! And yet, how singular! The rich districts on the

west seem steeped in a ruddy mist, whilst the good seed falls in golden

dust over the left bank and the populous districts eastward. It is there,

is it not, that the crop will spring up?"

They had all drawn near, and were smiling at the symbol. As Marie had

said, it seemed indeed that while the sun slowly sank behind the lacework

of clouds, the sower of eternal life scattered his flaming seed with a

rhythmical swing of the arm, ever selecting the districts of toil and

effort. One dazzling handful of grain fell over yonder on the district of

the schools; and then yet another rained down to fertilise the district

of the factories and work-shops.

"Ah! well," said Guillaume gaily. "May the crop soon sprout from the good

ground of our great Paris, which has been turned up by so many

revolutions, and enriched by the blood of so many workers! It is the only

ground in the world where Ideas can germinate and bloom. Yes, yes, Pierre

is quite right, it is the sun sowing Paris with the seed of the future

world, which can sprout only up here!"

Then Thomas, Francois and Antoine, who stood behind their father in a

row, nodded as if to say that this was also their own conviction; whilst

Mere-Grand gazed afar with dreamy eyes as though she could already behold

the splendid future.

"Ah! but it is only a dream; centuries must elapse. We shall never see

it!" murmured Pierre with a quiver.

"But others will!" cried Marie. "And does not that suffice?"

Those lofty words stirred Pierre to the depths of his being. And all at

once there came to him the memory of another Marie*--the adorable Marie

of his youth, that Marie de Guersaint who had been cured at Lourdes, and

the loss of whom had left such a void in his heart. Was that new Marie

who stood there smiling at him, so tranquil and so charming in her

strength, destined to heal that old-time wound? He felt that he was

beginning to live again since she had become his friend.

* The heroine of M. Zola's "Lourdes."

Meantime, there before them, the glorious sun, with the sweep of its

rays, was scattering living golden dust over Paris, still and ever sowing

the great future harvest of justice and of truth.

II. TOWARDS LIFE

ONE evening, at the close of a good day's work, Pierre, who was helping

Thomas, suddenly caught his foot in the skirt of his cassock and narrowly

escaped falling. At this, Marie, after raising a faint cry of anxiety,

exclaimed: "Why don't you take it off?"

There was no malice in her inquiry. She simply looked upon the priestly

robe as something too heavy and cumbersome, particularly when one had

certain work to perform. Nevertheless, her words deeply impressed Pierre,

and he could not forget them. When he was at home in the evening and

repeated them to himself they gradually threw him into feverish

agitation. Why, indeed, had he not divested himself of that cassock,

which weighed so heavily and painfully on his shoulders? Then a frightful

struggle began within him, and he spent a terrible, sleepless night,

again a prey to all his former torments.

At first sight it seemed a very simple matter that he should cast his

priestly gown aside, for had he not ceased to discharge any priestly

office? He had not said mass for some time past, and this surely meant

renunciation of the priesthood. Nevertheless, so long as he retained his

gown it was possible that he might some day say mass again, whereas if he

cast it aside he would, as it were, strip himself, quit the priesthood

entirely, without possibility of return. It was a terrible step to take,

one that would prove irrevocable; and thus he paced his room for hours,

in great anguish of mind.

He had formerly indulged in a superb dream. Whilst believing nothing

himself he had resolved to watch, in all loyalty, over the belief of

others. He would not so lower himself as to forswear his vows, he would

be no base renegade, but however great the torments of the void he felt

within him he would remain the minister of man's illusions respecting the

Divinity. And it was by reason of his conduct in this respect that he had

ended by being venerated as a saint--he who denied everything, who had

become a mere empty sepulchre. For a long time his falsehood had never

disturbed him, but it now brought him acute suffering. It seemed to him

that he would be acting in the vilest manner if he delayed placing his

life in accord with his opinions. The thought of it all quite rent his

heart.

The question was a very clear one. By what right did he remain the

minister of a religion in which he no longer believed? Did not elementary

honesty require that he should quit a Church in which he denied the

presence of the Divinity? He regarded the dogmas of that Church as

puerile errors, and yet he persisted in teaching them as if they were

eternal truths. Base work it was, that alarmed his conscience. He vainly

sought the feverish glow of charity and martyrdom which had led him to

offer himself as a sacrifice, willing to suffer all the torture of doubt

and to find his own life lost and ravaged, provided that he might yet

afford the relief of hope to the lowly. Truth and nature, no doubt, had

already regained too much ascendancy over him for those feelings to

return. The thought of such a lying apostolate now wounded him; he no

longer had the hypocritical courage to call the Divinity down upon the

believers kneeling before him, when he was convinced that the Divinity

would not descend. Thus all the past was swept away; there remained

nothing of the sublime pastoral part he would once have liked to play,

that supreme gift of himself which lay in stubborn adherence to the rules

of the Church, and such devotion to faith as to endure in silence the

torture of having lost it.

What must Marie think of his prolonged falsehood, he wondered, and

thereupon he seemed to hear her words again: "Why not take your cassock

off?" His conscience bled as if those words were a stab. What contempt

must she not feel for him, she who was so upright, so high-minded? Every

scattered blame, every covert criticism directed against his conduct,

seemed to find embodiment in her. It now sufficed that she should condemn

him, and he at once felt guilty. At the same time she had never voiced

her disapproval to him, in all probability because she did not think she

had any right to intervene in a struggle of conscience. The superb

calmness and healthiness which she displayed still astonished him. He

himself was ever haunted and tortured by thoughts of the unknown, of what

the morrow of death might have in store for one; but although he had

studied and watched her for days together, he had never seen her give a

sign of doubt or distress. This exemption from such sufferings as his own

was due, said she, to the fact that she gave all her gaiety, all her

energy, all her sense of duty, to the task of living, in such wise that

life itself proved a sufficiency, and no time was left for mere fancies

to terrify and stultify her. Well, then, since she with her air of quiet

strength had asked him why he did not take off his cassock, he would take

it off--yes, he would divest himself of that robe which seemed to burn

and weigh him down.

He fancied himself calmed by this decision, and towards morning threw

himself upon his bed; but all at once a stifling sensation, a renewal of

his abominable anguish, brought him to his feet again. No, no, he could

not divest himself of that gown which clung so tightly to his flesh. His

skin would come away with his cloth, his whole being would be lacerated!

Is not the mark of priesthood an indelible one, does it not brand the

priest for ever, and differentiate him from the flock? Even should he

tear off his gown with his skin, he would remain a priest, an object of

scandal and shame, awkward and impotent, shut off from the life of other

men. And so why tear it off, since he would still and ever remain in

prison, and a fruitful life of work in the broad sunlight was no longer

within his reach? He, indeed, fancied himself irremediably stricken with

impotence. Thus he was unable to come to any decision, and when he

returned to Montmartre two days later he had again relapsed into a state

of torment.

Feverishness, moreover, had come upon the happy home. Guillaume was

becoming more and more annoyed about Salvat's affair, not a day elapsing

without the newspapers fanning his irritation. He had at first been

deeply touched by the dignified and reticent bearing of Salvat, who had

declared that he had no accomplices whatever. Of course the inquiry into

the crime was what is called a secret one; but magistrate Amadieu, to

whom it had been entrusted, conducted it in a very noisy way. The

newspapers, which he in some degree took into his confidence, were full

of articles and paragraphs about him and his interviews with the

prisoner. Thanks to Salvat's quiet admissions, Amadieu had been able to

retrace the history of the crime hour by hour, his only remaining doubts

having reference to the nature of the powder which had been employed, and

the making of the bomb itself. It might after all be true that Salvat had

loaded the bomb at a friend's, as he indeed asserted was the case; but he

must be lying when he added that the only explosive used was dynamite,

derived from some stolen cartridges, for all the experts now declared

that dynamite would never have produced such effects as those which had

been witnessed. This, then, was the mysterious point which protracted the

investigations. And day by day the newspapers profited by it to circulate

the wildest stories under sensational headings, which were specially

devised for the purpose of sending up their sales.

It was all the nonsense contained in these stories that fanned