them with doctrines dangerous to the state.

In time these groups began to adhere even more closely to the large
bodies of the people; a party was born, small at first, embodying
conflicting communistic principles.

The government watched it. Presently it split, as do all parties; yet
here the paradox was revealed of a small party splitting into two
larger halves. To one of these halves adhered the Red Republicans, the
government opposition of the Extreme Left, the Opportunists, the
Anarchists, certain Socialists, the so-called Communards, and finally
the vast mass of the sullen, teeming faubourgs. It became a party
closely affiliated with the Internationale, a colossal, restless,
unorganized menace, harmless only because unorganized.

And the police were expected to keep it harmless. The other remaining
half of the original party began to dwindle almost immediately, until
it became only a group. _With one exception_, all those whom the
police and the government regarded as inclined to violence left the
group. There remained, _with this one exception_, a nucleus of
earnest, thoughtful people whose creed was in part the creed of the
Internationale, the creed of universal brotherhood, equality before
the law, purity of individual living as an example and an incentive to
a national purity.

To this inoffensive group came one day a young widow, the Countess de
Vassart, placing at their disposal her great wealth, asking only to be
received among them as a comrade.

Her history, as known to the police, was peculiar and rather sad: at
sixteen she had been betrothed to an elderly, bull-necked colonel of
cavalry, the notorious Count de Vassart, who needed what money she
might bring him to maintain his reputation as the most brilliantly
dissolute old rake in Paris.

At sixteen, Eline de Trecourt was a thin, red-haired girl, with rather
large, grayish eyes. Speed and I saw her once, sitting in her carriage
before the Ministry of War a year after her marriage. There had been
bad news from Mexico, and there were many handsome equipages standing
at the gates of the war office, where lists of killed and wounded were
posted every day.

I noticed her particularly because of her reputed wealth and the evil
reputation of her husband, who, it was said, was so open in his
contempt for her that the very afternoon of their marriage he was seen
publicly driving on the Champs-Elysees with a pretty and popular
actress of the Odeon.