iserable people. He sees suffering.
He has devotion without humanity. He has that sort of cold charity which
is called altruism. He is not human because he is not sensual."

"Oh! One must be sensual to be human?"

"Certainly, Madame. True pity, like tenderness, comes from the heart. He
is not intelligent enough to doubt. He believes what he has read. And
he has read that to establish universal happiness society must be
destroyed. Thirst for martyrdom devours him. One morning, having kissed
his mother, he goes out; he watches for the socialist deputy of his
district, sees him, throws himself on him, and buries a poniard in
his breast. Long live anarchy! He is arrested, measured, photographed,
questioned, judged, condemned to death, and guillotined. That is my
novel."

"It is not very amusing," said the Princess; "but that is not your
fault. Your anarchists are as timid and moderate as other Frenchmen. The
Russians have more audacity and more imagination."

Countess Martin asked Paul Vence whether he knew a silent, timid-looking
man among the guests. Her husband had invited him. She knew nothing of
him, not even his name. Paul Vence could only say that he was a senator.
He had seen him one day by chance in the Luxembourg, in the gallery that
served as a library.

"I went there to look at the cupola, where Delacroix has painted, in a
wood of bluish myrtles, heroes and sages of antiquity. That gentleman
was there, with the same wretched and pitiful air. His coat was damp and
he was warming himself. He was talking with old colleagues and saying,
while rubbing his hands: 'The proof that the Republic is the best of
governments is that in 1871 it could kill in a week sixty thousand
insurgents without becoming unpopular. After such a repression any other
regime would have been impossible.'"

"He is a very wicked man," said Madame Martin. "And to think that I was
pitying him!"

Madame Garain, her chin softly dropped on her chest, slept in the peace
of her housewifely mind, and dreamed of her vegetable garden on the
banks of the Loire, where singing-societies came to serenade her.

Joseph Schmoll and General Lariviere came out of the smoking-room. The
General took a seat between Princess Seniavine and Madame Martin.

"I met this morning, in the park, Baronne Warburg, mounted on a
magnificent horse. She said, 'General, how do you manage to have such
fine horses?' I replied: Madame, to have fine horses, you must be either