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going to die, that some most frightful catastrophe was impending. It must

have been that which had already sent such a quiver through the

atmosphere ever since the morning, making them shiver with fever, feel

ill at ease, and unable to work.

"Father is going to die, father is going to die!"

The three big fellows had drawn close together, distracted by one and the

same anguish, and furiously longing to know what the danger was, in order

that they might rush upon it and die with their father if they could not

save him. And amidst Mere-Grand's stubborn silence death once more

flitted through the room: there came a cold gust such as they had already

felt brushing past them during _dejeuner_.

At last four o'clock began to strike, and Mere-Grand raised her white

hands with a gesture of supreme entreaty. It was then that she at last

spoke: "Father is going to die. Nothing but the duty of living can save

him."

At this the three young men again wished to rush yonder, whither they

knew not; but they felt that they must throw down all obstacles and

conquer. Their powerlessness rent their hearts, they were both so frantic

and so woeful that their grandmother strove to calm them. "Father's own

wish was to die," said she, "and he is resolved to die alone."

They shuddered as they heard her, and then, on their side, strove to be

heroic. But the minutes crept by, and it seemed as if the cold gust had

slowly passed away. Sometimes, at the twilight hour, a night-bird will

come in by the window like some messenger of misfortune, flit round the

darkened room, and then fly off again, carrying its sadness with it. And

it was much like that; the gust passed, the basilica remained standing,

the earth did not open to swallow it. Little by little the atrocious

anguish which wrung their hearts gave place to hope. And when at last

Guillaume appeared, followed by Pierre, a great cry of resurrection came

from one and all: "Father!"

Their kisses, their tears, deprived him of his little remaining strength.

He was obliged to sit down. He had glanced round him as if he were

returning to life perforce. Mere-Grand, who understood what bitter

feelings must have followed the subjugation of his will, approached him

smiling, and took hold of both his hands as if to tell him that she was

well pleased at seeing him again, and at finding that he accepted his

task and was unwilling to desert the cause of life. For his part he

suffered dreadfully, the shock had been so great. The others spared him

any narrative of their feelings; and he, himself, related nothing. With a

gesture, a loving word, he simply indicated that it was Pierre who had

saved him.

Thereupon, in a corner of the room, Marie flung her arms round the young

man's neck. "Ah! my good Pierre, I have never yet kissed you," said she;

"I want it to be for something serious the first time.... I love you,

my good Pierre, I love you with all my heart."

Later that same evening, after night had fallen, Guillaume and Pierre

remained for a moment alone in the big workroom. The young men had gone

out, and Mere-Grand and Marie were upstairs sorting some house linen,

while Madame Mathis, who had brought some work back, sat patiently in a

dim corner waiting for another bundle of things which might require

mending. The brothers, steeped in the soft melancholy of the twilight

hour, and chatting in low tones, had quite forgotten her.

But all at once the arrival of a visitor upset them. It was Janzen with

the fair, Christ-like face. He called very seldom nowadays; and one never

knew from what gloomy spot he had come or into what darkness he would

return when he took his departure. He disappeared, indeed, for months

together, and was then suddenly to be seen like some momentary passer-by

whose past and present life were alike unknown.

"I am leaving to-night," he said in a voice sharp like a knife.

"Are you going back to your home in Russia?" asked Guillaume.

A faint, disdainful smile appeared on the Anarchist's lips. "Home!" said

he, "I am at home everywhere. To begin with, I am not a Russian, and then

I recognise no other country than the world."

With a sweeping gesture he gave them to understand what manner of man he

was, one who had no fatherland of his own, but carried his gory dream of

fraternity hither and thither regardless of frontiers. From some words he

spoke the brothers fancied he was returning to Spain, where some

fellow-Anarchists awaited him. There was a deal of work to be done there,

it appeared. He had quietly seated himself, chatting on in his cold way,

when all at once he serenely added: "By the by, a bomb had just been

thrown into the Cafe de l'Univers on the Boulevard. Three _bourgeois_

were killed."

Pierre and Guillaume shuddered, and asked for particulars. Thereupon

Janzen related that he had happened to be there, had heard the explosion,

and seen the windows of the cafe shivered to atoms. Three customers were

lying on the floor blown to pieces. Two of them were gentlemen, who had

entered the place by chance and whose names were not known, while the

third was a regular customer, a petty cit of the neighbourhood, who came

every day to play a game at dominoes. And the whole place was wrecked;

the marble tables were broken, the chandeliers twisted out of shape, the

mirrors studded with projectiles. And how great the terror and the

indignation, and how frantic the rush of the crowd! The perpetrator of

the deed had been arrested immediately--in fact, just as he was turning

the corner of the Rue Caumartin.

"I thought I would come and tell you of it," concluded Janzen; "it is

well you should know it."

Then as Pierre, shuddering and already suspecting the truth, asked him if

he knew who the man was that had been arrested, he slowly replied: "The

worry is that you happen to know him--it was little Victor Mathis."

Pierre tried to silence Janzen too late. He had suddenly remembered that

Victor's mother had been sitting in a dark corner behind them a short

time previously. Was she still there? Then he again pictured Victor,

slight and almost beardless, with a straight, stubborn brow, grey eyes

glittering with intelligence, a pointed nose and thin lips expressive of

stern will and unforgiving hatred. He was no simple and lowly one from

the ranks of the disinherited. He was an educated scion of the

_bourgeoisie_, and but for circumstances would have entered the Ecole

Normale. There was no excuse for his abominable deed, there was no

political passion, no humanitarian insanity, in it. He was the destroyer

pure and simple, the theoretician of destruction, the cold energetic man

of intellect who gave his cultivated mind to arguing the cause of murder,

in his desire to make murder an instrument of the social evolution. True,

he was also a poet, a visionary, but the most frightful of all

visionaries: a monster whose nature could only be explained by mad pride,

and who craved for the most awful immortality, dreaming that the coming

dawn would rise from the arms of the guillotine. Only one thing could

surpass him: the scythe of death which blindly mows the world.

For a few seconds, amidst the growing darkness, cold horror reigned in

the workroom. "Ah!" muttered Guillaume, "he had the daring to do it, he

had."

Pierre, however, lovingly pressed his arm. And he felt that he was as

distracted, as upset, as himself. Perhaps this last abomination had been

needed to ravage and cure him.

Janzen no doubt had been an accomplice in the deed. He was relating that

Victor's purpose had been to avenge Salvat, when all at once a great sigh

of pain was heard in the darkness, followed by a heavy thud upon the

floor. It was Madame Mathis falling like a bundle, overwhelmed by the

news which chance had brought her. At that moment it so happened that

Mere-Grand came down with a lamp, which lighted up the room, and

thereupon they hurried to the help of the wretched woman, who lay there

as pale as a corpse in her flimsy black gown.

And this again brought Pierre an indescribable heart-pang. Ah! the poor,

sad, suffering creature! He remembered her at Abbe Rose's, so discreet,

so shamefaced, in her poverty, scarce able to live upon the slender

resources which persistent misfortunes had left her. Hers had indeed been

a cruel lot: first, a home with wealthy parents in the provinces, a love

story and elopement with the man of her choice; next, ill-luck steadily

pursuing her, all sorts of home troubles, and at last her husband's

death. Then, in the retirement of her widowhood, after losing the best

part of the little income which had enabled her to bring up her son,

naught but this son had been left to her. He had been her Victor, her

sole affection, the only one in whom she had faith. She had ever striven

to believe that he was very busy, absorbed in work, and on the eve of

attaining to some superb position worthy of his merits. And now, all at

once, she had learnt that this fondly loved son was simply the most

odious of assassins, that he had flung a bomb into a cafe, and had there

killed three men.

When Madame Mathis had recovered her senses, thanks to the careful

tending of Mere-Grand, she sobbed on without cessation, raising such a

continuous doleful wail, that Pierre's hand again sought Guillaume's, and

grasped it, whilst their hearts, distracted but healed, mingled lovingly

one with the other.

V. LIFE'S WORK AND PROMISE

FIFTEEN months later, one fine golden day in September, Bache and

Theophile Morin were taking _dejeuner_ at Guillaume's, in the big

workroom overlooking the immensity of Paris.

Near the table was a cradle with its little curtains drawn. Behind them

slept Jean, a fine boy four months old, the son of Pierre and Marie. The

latter, simply in order to protect the child's social rights, had been

married civilly at the town-hall of Montmartre. Then, by way of pleasing

Guillaume, who wished to keep them with him, and thus enlarge the family

circle, they had continued living in the little lodging over the

work-shop, leaving the sleepy house at Neuilly in the charge of Sophie,

Pierre's old servant. And life had been flowing on happily for the

fourteen months or so that they had now belonged to one another.

There was simply peace, affection and work around the young couple.

Francois, who had left the Ecole Normale provided with every degree,

every diploma, was now about to start for a college in the west of

France, so as to serve his term of probation as a professor, intending to

resign his post afterwards and devote himself, if he pleased, to science

pure and simple. Then Antoine had lately achieved great success with a

series of engravings he had executed--some views and scenes of Paris

life; and it was settled that he was to marry Lise Jahan in the ensuing

spring, when she would have completed her seventeenth year. Of the three

sons, however, Thomas was the most triumphant, for he had at last devised

and constructed his little motor, thanks to a happy idea of his father's.

One morning, after the downfall of all his huge chimerical schemes,

Guillaume, remembering the terrible explosive which he had discovered and

hitherto failed to utilise, had suddenly thought of employing it as a

motive force, in the place of petroleum, in the motor which his eldest

son had so long been trying to construct for the Grandidier works. So he

had set to work with Thomas, devising a new mechanism, encountering

endless difficulties, and labouring for a whole year before reaching

success. But now the father and son had accomplished their task; the

marvel was created, and stood there riveted to an oak stand, and ready to

work as soon as its final toilet should have been performed.

Amidst all the changes which had occurred, Mere-Grand, in spite of her

great age, continued exercising her active, silent sway over the

household, which was now again so gay and peaceful. Though she seldom

seemed to leave her chair in front of her work-table, she was really

here, there and everywhere. Since the birth of Jean, she had talked of

rearing the child in the same way as she had formerly reared Thomas,

Francois and Antoine. She was indeed full of the bravery of devotion, and

seemed to think that she was not at all likely to die so long as she

might have others to guide, love and save. Marie marvelled at it all. She

herself, though she was always gay and in good health, felt tired at

times now that she was suckling her infant. Little Jean indeed had two

vigilant mothers near his cradle; whilst his father, Pierre, who had

become Thomas's assistant, pulled the bellows, roughened out pieces of

metal, and generally completed his apprenticeship as a working

mechanician.

On the particular day when Bache and Theophile Morin came to Montmartre,

the _dejeuner_ proved even gayer than usual, thanks perhaps to their

presence. The meal was over, the table had been cleared, and the coffee

was being served, when a little boy, the son of a doorkeeper in the Rue

Cortot, came to ask for Monsieur Pierre Froment. When they inquired his

business, he answered in a hesitating way that Monsieur l'Abbe Rose was

very ill, indeed dying, and that he had sent him to fetch Monsieur Pierre

Froment at once.

Pierre followed the lad, feeling much affected; and on reaching the Rue

Cortot he there found Abbe Rose in a little damp ground-floor room

overlooking a strip of garden. The old priest was in bed, dying as the

boy had said, but he still retained the use of his faculties, and could

speak in his wonted slow and gentle voice. A Sister of Charity was

watching beside him, and she seemed so surprised and anxious at the

arrival of a visitor whom she did not know, that Pierre understood she

was there to guard the dying man and prevent him from having intercourse

with others. The old priest must have employed some stratagem in order to

send the doorkeeper's boy to fetch him. However, when Abbe Rose in his