Work

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