第 79 页

Pierre clasped his trembling hands, and at once tried to entreat him.

"Brother, brother," he began.

"No, don't speak yet," said Guillaume, "if you absolutely wish it I will

listen to you by-and-by. We have nearly an hour before us, so we can

chat. But I want you to understand the futility of all you may think

needful to tell me. My resolution is unshakable; I was a long time coming

to it, and in carrying it out I shall simply be acting in accordance with

my reason and my conscience."

Then he quietly related that having decided upon a great deed he had long

hesitated as to which edifice he should destroy. The opera-house had

momentarily tempted him, but he had reflected that there would be no

great significance in the whirlwind of anger and justice destroying a

little set of enjoyers. In fact, such a deed might savour of jealousy and

covetousness. Next he had thought of the Bourse, where he might strike a

blow at money, the great agent of corruption, and the capitalist society

in whose clutches the wage-earners groaned. Only, here again the blow

would fall upon a restricted circle. Then an idea of destroying the

Palace of Justice, particularly the assize court, had occurred to him. It

was a very tempting thought--to wreak justice upon human justice, to

sweep away the witnesses, the culprit, the public prosecutor who charges

the latter, the counsel who defends him, the judges who sentence him, and

the lounging public which comes to the spot as to the unfolding of some

sensational serial. And then too what fierce irony there would be in the

summary superior justice of the volcano swallowing up everything

indiscriminately without pausing to enter into details. However, the plan

over which he had most lingered was that of blowing up the Arc de

Triomphe. This he regarded as an odious monument which perpetuated

warfare, hatred among nations, and the false, dearly purchased,

sanguineous glory of conquerors. That colossus raised to the memory of so

much frightful slaughter which had uselessly put an end to so many human

lives, ought, he considered, to be slaughtered in its turn. Could he so

have arranged things that the earth should swallow it up, he might have

achieved the glory of causing no other death than his own, of dying

alone, struck down, crushed to pieces beneath that giant of stone. What a

tomb, and what a memory might he thus have left to the world!

"But there was no means of approaching it," he continued, "no basement,

no cellar, so I had to give up the idea.... And then, although I'm

perfectly willing to die alone, I thought what a loftier and more

terrible lesson there would be in the unjust death of an innocent

multitude, of thousands of unknown people, of all those that might happen

to be passing. In the same way as human society by dint of injustice,

want and harsh regulations causes so many innocent victims, so must

punishment fall as the lightning falls, indiscriminately killing and

destroying whatever it may encounter in its course. When a man sets his

foot on an ant-hill, he gives no heed to all the lives which he stamps

out."

Pierre, whom this theory rendered quite indignant, raised a cry of

protest: "Oh! brother, brother, is it you who are saying such things?"

Yet, Guillaume did not pause: "If I have ended by choosing this basilica

of the Sacred Heart," he continued, "it is because I found it near at

hand and easy to destroy. But it is also because it haunts and

exasperates me, because I have long since condemned it.... As I have

often said to you, one cannot imagine anything more preposterous than

Paris, our great Paris, crowned and dominated by this temple raised to

the glorification of the absurd. Is it not outrageous that common sense

should receive such a smack after so many centuries of science, that Rome

should claim the right of triumphing in this insolent fashion, on our

loftiest height in the full sunlight? The priests want Paris to repent

and do penitence for its liberative work of truth and justice. But its

only right course is to sweep away all that hampers and insults it in its

march towards deliverance. And so may the temple fall with its deity of

falsehood and servitude! And may its ruins crush its worshippers, so that

like one of the old geological revolutions of the world, the catastrophe

may resound through the very entrails of mankind, and renew and change

it!"

"Brother, brother!" again cried Pierre, quite beside himself, "is it you

who are talking? What! you, a great scientist, a man of great heart, you

have come to this! What madness is stirring you that you should think and

say such abominable things? On the evening when we confessed our secrets

one to the other, you told me of your proud and lofty dream of ideal

Anarchy. There would be free harmony in life, which left to its natural

forces would of itself create happiness. But you still rebelled against

the idea of theft and murder. You would not accept them as right or

necessary; you merely explained and excused them. What has happened then

that you, all brain and thought, should now have become the hateful hand

that acts?"

"Salvat has been guillotined," said Guillaume simply, "and I read his

will and testament in his last glance. I am merely an executor.... And

what has happened, you ask? Why, all that has made me suffer for four

months past, the whole social evil which surrounds us, and which must be

brought to an end."

Silence fell. The brothers looked at one another in the darkness. And

Pierre now understood things. He saw that Guillaume was changed, that the

terrible gust of revolutionary contagion sweeping over Paris had

transformed him. It had all come from the duality of his nature, the

presence of contradictory elements within him. On one side one found a

scientist whose whole creed lay in observation and experiment, who, in

dealing with nature, evinced the most cautious logic; while on the other

side was a social dreamer, haunted by ideas of fraternity, equality and

justice, and eager for universal happiness. Thence had first come the

theoretical anarchist that he had been, one in whom science and chimeras

were mingled, who dreamt of human society returning to the harmonious law

of the spheres, each man free, in a free association, regulated by love

alone. Neither Theophile Morin with the doctrines of Proudhon and Comte,

nor Bache with those of St. Simon and Fourier, had been able to satisfy

his desire for the absolute. All those systems had seemed to him

imperfect and chaotic, destructive of one another, and tending to the

same wretchedness of life. Janzen alone had occasionally satisfied him

with some of his curt phrases which shot over the horizon, like arrows

conquering the whole earth for the human family. And then in Guillaume's

big heart, which the idea of want, the unjust sufferings of the lowly and

the poor exasperated, Salvat's tragic adventure had suddenly found place,

fomenting supreme rebellion. For long weeks he had lived on with

trembling hands, with growing anguish clutching at his throat. First had

come that bomb and the explosion which still made him quiver, then the

vile cupidity of the newspapers howling for the poor wretch's head, then

the search for him and the hunt through the Bois de Boulogne, till he

fell into the hands of the police, covered with mud and dying of

starvation. And afterwards there had been the assize court, the judges,

the gendarmes, the witnesses, the whole of France arrayed against one man

and bent on making him pay for the universal crime. And finally, there

had come the guillotine, the monstrous, the filthy beast consummating

irreparable injustice in human justice's name. One sole idea now remained

to Guillaume, that idea of justice which maddened him, leaving naught in

his mind save the thought of the just, avenging flare by which he would

repair the evil and ensure that which was right for all time forward.

Salvat had looked at him, and contagion had done its work; he glowed with

a desire for death, a desire to give his own blood and set the blood of

others flowing, in order that mankind, amidst its fright and horror,

should decree the return of the golden age.

Pierre understood the stubborn blindness of such insanity; and he felt

utterly upset by the fear that he should be unable to overcome it. "You

are mad, brother!" he exclaimed, "they have driven you mad! It is a gust

of violence passing; they were treated in a wrong way and too

relentlessly at the outset, and now that they are avenging one another,

it may be that blood will never cease to flow.... But, listen,

brother, throw off that nightmare. You can't be a Salvat who murders or a

Bergaz who steals! Remember the pillage of the Princess's house and

remember the fair-haired, pretty child whom we saw lying yonder, ripped

open.... You do not, you cannot belong to that set, brother--"

With a wave of his hand, Guillaume brushed these vain reasons aside. Of

what consequence were a few lives, his own included? No change had ever

taken place in the world without millions and millions of existences

being stamped out.

"But you had a great scheme in hand," cried Pierre, hoping to save him by

reviving his sense of duty. "It isn't allowable for you to go off like

this."

Then he fervently strove to awaken his brother's scientific pride. He

spoke to him of his secret, of that great engine of warfare, which could

destroy armies and reduce cities to dust, and which he had intended to

offer to France, so that on emerging victorious from the approaching war,

she might afterwards become the deliverer of the world. And it was this

grand scheme that he had abandoned, preferring to employ his explosive in

killing innocent people and overthrowing a church, which would be built

afresh, whatever the cost, and become a sanctuary of martyrs!

Guillaume smiled. "I have not relinquished my scheme," said he, "I have

simply modified it. Did I not tell you of my doubts, my anxious

perplexity? Ah! to believe that one holds the destiny of the world in

one's grasp, and to tremble and hesitate and wonder if the intelligence

and wisdom, that are needful for things to take the one wise course, will

be forthcoming! At sight of all the stains upon our great Paris, all the

errors and transgressions which we lately witnessed, I shuddered. I asked

myself if Paris were sufficiently calm and pure for one to entrust her

with omnipotence. How terrible would be the disaster if such an invention

as mine should fall into the hands of a demented nation, possibly a

dictator, some man of conquest, who would simply employ it to terrorize

other nations and reduce them to slavery.... Ah! no, I do not wish to

perpetuate warfare, I wish to kill it."

Then in a clear firm voice he explained his new plan, in which Pierre was

surprised to find some of the ideas which General de Bozonnet had one day

laid before him in a very different spirit. Warfare was on the road to

extinction, threatened by its very excesses. In the old days of

mercenaries, and afterwards with conscripts, the percentage of soldiers

designated by chance, war had been a profession and a passion. But

nowadays, when everybody is called upon to fight, none care to do so. By

the logical force of things, the system of the whole nation in arms means

the coming end of armies. How much longer will the nations remain on a

footing of deadly peace, bowed down by ever increasing "estimates,"

spending millions and millions on holding one another in respect? Ah! how

great the deliverance, what a cry of relief would go up on the day when

some formidable engine, capable of destroying armies and sweeping cities

away, should render war an impossibility and constrain every people to

disarm! Warfare would be dead, killed in her own turn, she who has killed

so many. This was Guillaume's dream, and he grew quite enthusiastic, so

strong was his conviction that he would presently bring it to pass.

"Everything is settled," said he; "if I am about to die and disappear, it

is in order that my idea may triumph.... You have lately seen me spend

whole afternoons alone with Mere-Grand. Well, we were completing the

classification of the documents and making our final arrangements. She

has my orders, and will execute them even at the risk of her life, for

none has a braver, loftier soul.... As soon as I am dead, buried

beneath these stones, as soon as she has heard the explosion shake Paris

and proclaim the advent of the new era, she will forward a set of all the

documents I have confided to her--the formula of my explosive, the

drawings of the bomb and gun--to each of the great powers of the world.

In this wise I shall bestow on all the nations the terrible gift of

destruction and omnipotence which, at first, I wished to bestow on France

alone; and I do this in order that the nations, being one and all armed

with the thunderbolt, may at once disarm, for fear of being annihilated,

when seeking to annihilate others."

Pierre listened to him, gaping, amazed at this extraordinary idea, in

which childishness was blended with genius. "Well," said he, "if you give

your secret to all the nations, why should you blow up this church, and

die yourself?"

"Why! In order that I may be believed!" cried Guillaume with

extraordinary force of utterance. Then he added, "The edifice must lie on

the ground, and I must be under it. If the experiment is not made, if

universal horror does not attest and proclaim the amazing destructive

power of my explosive, people will consider me a mere schemer, a

visionary!... A lot of dead, a lot of blood, that is what is needed in

order that blood may for ever cease to flow!" Then, with a broad sweep of

his arm, he again declared that his action was necessary. "Besides," he

said, "Salvat left me the legacy of carrying out this deed of justice. If

I have given it greater scope and significance, utilising it as a means