ed, of all his leisure hours. He no longer read any books
beyond those which his duties compelled him to peruse; he preferred
to tramp along the Rue Saint Jacques as far as the outer boulevards,
occasionally going yet a greater distance and returning by the Barriere
d'Italie; and all along the road, with his eyes on the Quartier
Mouffetard spread out at his feet, he would devise reforms of great
moral and humanitarian scope, such as he thought would change that city
of suffering into an abode of bliss. During the turmoil of February
1848, when Paris was stained with blood he became quite heartbroken, and
rushed from one to another of the public clubs demanding that the blood
which had been shed should find atonement in "the fraternal embrace
of all republicans throughout the world." He became one of those
enthusiastic orators who preached revolution as a new religion, full of
gentleness and salvation. The terrible days of December 1851, the days
of the Coup d'Etat, were required to wean him from his doctrines of
universal love. He was then without arms; allowed himself to be captured
like a sheep, and was treated as though he were a wolf. He awoke from
his sermon on universal brotherhood to find himself starving on the cold
stones of a casemate at Bicetre.

Quenu, when two and twenty, was distressed with anguish when his brother
did not return home. On the following day he went to seek his corpse at
the cemetery of Montmartre, where the bodies of those shot down on the
boulevards had been laid out in a line and covered with straw, from
beneath which only their ghastly heads projected. However, Quenu's
courage failed him, he was blinded by his tears, and had to pass twice
along the line of corpses before acquiring the certainty that Florent's
was not among them. At last, at the end of a long and wretched week, he
learned at the Prefecture of Police that his brother was a prisoner. He
was not allowed to see him, and when he pressed the matter the police
threatened to arrest him also. Then he hastened off to his uncle
Gradelle, whom he looked upon as a person of importance, hoping that he
might be able to enlist his influence in Florent's behalf. But Gradelle
waxed wrathful, declared that Florent deserved his fate, that he ought
to have known better than to have mixed himself up with those rascally
republicans. And he even added that Florent was destined to turn out
badly, that it was written on his face.

Quenu wept copi