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notorious harlot Silviane, with whom his father publicly exhibited

himself. Then there was the old expiring aristocracy, with the pale, sad

faces of Madame de Quinsac and the Marquis de Morigny; the old military

spirit whose funeral was conducted by General de Bozonnet; the magistracy

which slavishly served the powers of the day, Amadieu thrusting himself

into notoriety by means of sensational cases, Lehmann, the public

prosecutor, preparing his speeches in the private room of the Minister

whose policy he defended; and, finally, the mendacious and cupid Press

which lived upon scandal, the everlasting flood of denunciation and filth

which poured from Sagnier, and the gay impudence shown by the

unscrupulous and conscienceless Massot, who attacked all and defended

all, by profession and to order! And in the same way as insects, on

discovering one of their own kind dying, will often finish it off and

fatten upon it, so the whole swarm of appetites, interests and passions

had fallen upon a wretched madman, that unhappy Salvat, whose idiotic

crime had brought them all scrambling together, gluttonously eager to

derive some benefit from that starveling's emaciated carcass. And all

boiled in the huge vat of Paris; the desires, the deeds of violence, the

strivings of one and another man's will, the whole nameless medley of the

bitterest ferments, whence, in all purity, the wine of the future would

at last flow.

Then Pierre became conscious of the prodigious work which went on in the

depths of the vat, beneath all the impurity and waste. As his brother had

just said, what mattered the stains, the egotism and greed of

politicians, if humanity were still on the march, ever slowly and

stubbornly stepping forward! What mattered, too, that corrupt and

emasculate _bourgeoisie_, nowadays as moribund as the aristocracy, whose

place it took, if behind it there ever came the inexhaustible reserve of

men who surged up from the masses of the country-sides and the towns!

What mattered the debauchery, the perversion arising from excess of

wealth and power, the luxuriousness and dissoluteness of life, since it

seemed a proven fact that the capitals that had been queens of the world

had never reigned without extreme civilisation, a cult of beauty and of

pleasure! And what mattered even the venality, the transgressions and the

folly of the press, if at the same time it remained an admirable

instrument for the diffusion of knowledge, the open conscience, so to

say, of the nation, a river which, though there might be horrors on its

surface, none the less flowed on, carrying all nations to the brotherly

ocean of the future centuries! The human lees ended by sinking to the

bottom of the vat, and it was not possible to expect that what was right

would triumph visibly every day; for it was often necessary that years

should elapse before the realisation of some hope could emerge from the

fermentation. Eternal matter is ever being cast afresh into the crucible

and ever coming from it improved. And if in the depths of pestilential

workshops and factories the slavery of ancient times subsists in the

wage-earning system, if such men as Toussaint still die of want on their

pallets like broken-down beasts of burden, it is nevertheless a fact that

once already, on a memorable day of tempest, Liberty sprang forth from

the vat to wing her flight throughout the world. And why in her turn

should not Justice spring from it, proceeding from those troubled

elements, freeing herself from all dross, flowing forth with dazzling

limpidity and regenerating the nations?

However, the voices of Bache and Morin, rising in the course of their

chat with Guillaume, once more drew Pierre from his reverie. They were

now speaking of Janzen, who after being compromised in a fresh outrage at

Barcelona had fled from Spain. Bache fancied that he had recognised him

in the street only the previous day. To think that a man with so clear a

mind and such keen energy should waste his natural gifts in such a

hateful cause!

"When I remember," said Morin slowly, "that Barthes lives in exile in a

shabby little room at Brussels, ever quivering with the hope that the

reign of liberty is at hand--he who has never had a drop of blood on his

hands and who has spent two-thirds of his life in prison in order that

the nations may be freed!"

Bache gently shrugged his shoulders: "Liberty, liberty, of course," said

he; "only it is worth nothing if it is not organised."

Thereupon their everlasting discussion began afresh, with Saint-Simon and

Fourier on one side and Proudhon and Auguste Comte on the other. Bache

gave a long account of the last commemoration which had taken place in

honour of Fourier's memory, how faithful disciples had brought wreaths

and made speeches, forming quite a meeting of apostles, who all

stubbornly clung to their faith, as confident in the future as if they

were the messengers of some new gospel. Afterwards Morin emptied his

pockets, which were always full of Positivist tracts and pamphlets,

manifestos, answers and so forth, in which Comte's doctrines were

extolled as furnishing the only possible basis for the new, awaited

religion. Pierre, who listened, thereupon remembered the disputes in his

little house at Neuilly when he himself, searching for certainty, had

endeavoured to draw up the century's balance-sheet. He had lost his

depth, in the end, amidst the contradictions and incoherency of the

various precursors. Although Fourier had sprung from Saint-Simon, he

denied him in part, and if Saint-Simon's doctrine ended in a kind of

mystical sensuality, the other's conducted to an inacceptable regimenting

of society. Proudhon, for his part, demolished without rebuilding

anything. Comte, who created method and declared science to be the one

and only sovereign, had not even suspected the advent of the social

crisis which now threatened to sweep all away, and had finished

personally as a mere worshipper of love, overpowered by woman.

Nevertheless, these two, Comte and Proudhon, entered the lists and fought

against the others, Fourier and Saint-Simon; the combat between them or

their disciples becoming so bitter and so blind that the truths common to

them all at first seemed obscured and disfigured beyond recognition. Now,

however, that evolution had slowly transformed Pierre, those common

truths seemed to him as irrefutable, as clear as the sunlight itself.

Amidst the chaos of conflicting assertions which was to be found in the

gospels of those social messiahs, there were certain similar phrases and

principles which recurred again and again, the defence of the poor, the

idea of a new and just division of the riches of the world in accordance

with individual labour and merit, and particularly the search for a new

law of labour which would enable this fresh distribution to be made

equitably. Since all the precursory men of genius agreed so closely upon

those points, must they not be the very foundations of to-morrow's new

religion, the necessary faith which this century must bequeath to the

coming century, in order that the latter may make of it a human religion

of peace, solidarity and love?

Then, all at once, there came a leap in Pierre's thoughts. He fancied

himself at the Madeleine once more, listening to the address on the New

Spirit delivered by Monseigneur Martha, who had predicted that Paris, now

reconverted to Christianity, would, thanks to the Sacred Heart, become

the ruler of the world. But no, but no! If Paris reigned, it was because

it was able to exercise its intelligence freely. To set the cross and the

mystic and repulsive symbolism of a bleeding heart above it was simply so

much falsehood. Although they might rear edifices of pride and domination

as if to crush Paris with their very weight, although they might try to

stop science in the name of a dead ideal and in the hope of setting their

clutches upon the coming century, these attempts would be of no avail.

Science will end by sweeping away all remnants of their ancient

sovereignty, their basilica will crumble beneath the breeze of Truth

without any necessity of raising a finger against it. The trial has been

made, the Gospel as a social code has fallen to pieces, and human wisdom

can only retain account of its moral maxims. Ancient Catholicism is on

all sides crumbling into dust, Catholic Rome is a mere field of ruins

from which the nations turn aside, anxious as they are for a religion

that shall not be a religion of death. In olden times the overburdened

slave, glowing with a new hope and seeking to escape from his gaol,

dreamt of a heaven where in return for his earthly misery he would be

rewarded with eternal enjoyment. But now that science has destroyed that

false idea of a heaven, and shown what dupery lies in reliance on the

morrow of death, the slave, the workman, weary of dying for happiness'

sake, demands that justice and happiness shall find place upon this

earth. Therein lies the new hope--Justice, after eighteen hundred years

of impotent Charity. Ah! in a thousand years from now, when Catholicism

will be naught but a very ancient superstition of the past, how amazed

men will be to think that their ancestors were able to endure that

religion of torture and nihility! How astonished they will feel on

finding that God was regarded as an executioner, that manhood was

threatened, maimed and chastised, that nature was accounted an enemy,

that life was looked upon as something accursed, and that death alone was

pronounced sweet and liberating! For well-nigh two thousand years the

onward march of mankind has been hampered by the odious idea of tearing

all that is human away from man: his desires, his passions, his free

intelligence, his will and right of action, his whole strength. And how

glorious will be the awakening when such virginity as is now honoured by

the Church is held in derision, when fruitfulness is again recognised as

a virtue, amidst the hosanna of all the freed forces of nature--man's

desires which will be honoured, his passions which will be utilised, his

labour which will be exalted, whilst life is loved and ever and ever

creates love afresh!

A new religion! a new religion! Pierre remembered the cry which had

escaped him at Lourdes, and which he had repeated at Rome in presence of

the collapse of old Catholicism. But he no longer displayed the same

feverish eagerness as then--a puerile, sickly desire that a new Divinity

should at once reveal himself, an ideal come into being, complete in all

respects, with dogmas and form of worship. The Divine certainly seemed to

be as necessary to man as were bread and water; he had ever fallen back

upon it, hungering for the mysterious, seemingly having no other means of

consolation than that of annihilating himself in the unknown. But who can

say that science will not some day quench the thirst for what lies beyond

us? If the domain of science embraces the acquired truths, it also

embraces, and will ever do so, the truths that remain to be acquired. And

in front of it will there not ever remain a margin for the thirst of

knowledge, for the hypotheses which are but so much ideality? Besides, is

not the yearning for the divine simply a desire to behold the Divinity?

And if science should more and more content the yearning to know all and

be able to do all, will not that yearning be quieted and end by mingling

with the love of acquired truth? A religion grafted on science is the

indicated, certain, inevitable finish of man's long march towards

knowledge. He will come to it at last as to a natural haven, as to peace

in the midst of certainty, after passing every form of ignorance and

terror on his road. And is there not already some indication of such a

religion? Has not the idea of the duality of God and the Universe been

brushed aside, and is not the principle of unity, _monisme_, becoming

more and more evident--unity leading to solidarity, and the sole law of

life proceeding by evolution from the first point of the ether that

condensed to create the world? But if precursors, scientists and

philosophers--Darwin, Fourier and all the others--have sown the seed of

to-morrow's religion by casting the good word to the passing breeze, how

many centuries will doubtless be required to raise the crop! People

always forget that before Catholicism grew up and reigned in the

sunlight, it spent four centuries in germinating and sprouting from the

soil. Well, then, grant some centuries to this religion of science of

whose sprouting there are signs upon all sides, and by-and-by the

admirable ideas of some Fourier will be seen expanding and forming a new

gospel, with desire serving as the lever to raise the world, work

accepted by one and all, honoured and regulated as the very mechanism of

natural and social life, and the passions of man excited, contented and

utilised for human happiness! The universal cry of Justice, which rises

louder and louder, in a growing clamour from the once silent multitude,

the people that have so long been duped and preyed upon, is but a cry for

this happiness towards which human beings are tending, the happiness that

embodies the complete satisfaction of man's needs, and the principle of

life loved for its own sake, in the midst of peace and the expansion of

every force and every joy. The time will come when this Kingdom of God

will be set upon the earth; so why not close that other deceptive

paradise, even if the weak-minded must momentarily suffer from the

destruction of their illusions; for it is necessary to operate even with

cruelty on the blind if they are to be extricated from their misery, from

their long and frightful night of ignorance!

All at once a feeling of deep joy came over Pierre. A child's faint cry,

the wakening cry of his son Jean had drawn him from his reverie. And he

had suddenly remembered that he himself was now saved, freed from

falsehood and fright, restored to good and healthy nature. How he

quivered as he recalled that he had once fancied himself lost, blotted