rst has the whole heavens in his eyes; the last, enigmatical though he
may be, has still, beneath his eyelids, the pale beam of the infinite.
Venerate the man, whoever he may be, who has this sign--the starry eye.

The shadowy eye is the other sign.

With it, evil commences. Reflect and tremble in the presence of any one
who has no glance at all. The social order has its black miners.

There is a point where depth is tantamount to burial, and where light
becomes extinct.

Below all these mines which we have just mentioned, below all these
galleries, below this whole immense, subterranean, venous system of
progress and utopia, much further on in the earth, much lower than
Marat, lower than Babeuf, lower, much lower, and without any connection
with the upper levels, there lies the last mine. A formidable spot. This
is what we have designated as the le troisieme dessous. It is the grave
of shadows. It is the cellar of the blind. Inferi.

This communicates with the abyss.

CHAPTER II--THE LOWEST DEPTHS

There disinterestedness vanishes. The demon is vaguely outlined; each
one is for himself. The _I_ in the eyes howls, seeks, fumbles, and
gnaws. The social Ugolino is in this gulf.

The wild spectres who roam in this grave, almost beasts, almost
phantoms, are not occupied with universal progress; they are ignorant
both of the idea and of the word; they take no thought for anything
but the satisfaction of their individual desires. They are almost
unconscious, and there exists within them a sort of terrible
obliteration. They have two mothers, both step-mothers, ignorance and
misery. They have a guide, necessity; and for all forms of satisfaction,
appetite. They are brutally voracious, that is to say, ferocious, not
after the fashion of the tyrant, but after the fashion of the tiger.
From suffering these spectres pass to crime; fatal affiliation, dizzy
creation, logic of darkness. That which crawls in the social third lower
level is no longer complaint stifled by the absolute; it is the protest
of matter. Man there becomes a dragon. To be hungry, to be thirsty--that
is the point of departure; to be Satan--that is the point reached. From
that vault Lacenaire emerges.

We have just seen, in Book Fourth, one of the compartments of the
upper mine, of the great political, revolutionary, and philosophical
excavation. There, as we have just said, all is pure, noble, dignified,
honest. There, assuredly, one might be mis