which had been their narrow and sombre prison, wherein they had
been overwhelmed with contempt, wherein their souls had been loaded with
abuse, and they saw the great importance of their work, and thus was
unveiled to them the sacred right they had to become the masters of
life, its creators and its lawgivers.

And the lifegiving word of union presented itself to them with a new
face, with a blinding clearness:

"Comrade."

There among lying words it rang out boldly, as the joyous harbinger of
the time to come, of a new life open to all in the future;--far or near?
They felt that it depended upon them whether they advanced towards
liberty or themselves deferred its coming.

The prostitute who, but the evening before, was but a hungry beast,
sadly waiting on the muddy pavement to be accosted by some one who would
buy her caresses, the prostitute, too, heard this word, but was
undecided whether to repeat it. A man the like of whom she had never
seen till then approached her, laid his hand upon her shoulder and said
to her in an affectionate tone, "Comrade." And she gave a little
embarrassed smile, ready to cry with the joy her wounded heart
experienced for the first time. Tears of pure gaiety shone in her eyes,
which, the night before, had looked at the world with a stupid and
insolent expression of a starving animal. In all the streets of the city
the outcasts celebrated the triumph of their reunion with the great
family of workers of the entire world; and the dead eyes of the houses
looked on with an air more and more cold and menacing.

The beggar to whom but the night before an obol was thrown, price of the
compassion of the well-fed, the beggar also heard this word; and it was
the first alms which aroused a feeling of gratitude in his poor heart,
gnawed by misery.

A coachman, a great big fellow whose patrons struck him that their blows
might be transmitted to his thin-flanked, weary horse, this man imbruted
by the noise of wheels upon the pavement, said, smiling, to a passer-by:
"Well, Comrade!" He was frightened at his own words. He took the reins
in his hands, ready to start, and looked at the passer-by, the joyous
smile not yet effaced from his big face. The other cast a friendly
glance at him and answered, shaking his head: "Thanks, comrade; I will
go on foot; I am not going far."

"Ah, the fine fellow!" exclaimed the coachman enthusiastically; he
stirred in his seat, winking his eyes gaily, and started