f
stern will and unforgiving hatred. He was no simple and lowly one from
the ranks of the disinherited. He was an educated scion of the
_bourgeoisie_, and but for circumstances would have entered the Ecole
Normale. There was no excuse for his abominable deed, there was no
political passion, no humanitarian insanity, in it. He was the destroyer
pure and simple, the theoretician of destruction, the cold energetic man
of intellect who gave his cultivated mind to arguing the cause of murder,
in his desire to make murder an instrument of the social evolution. True,
he was also a poet, a visionary, but the most frightful of all
visionaries: a monster whose nature could only be explained by mad pride,
and who craved for the most awful immortality, dreaming that the coming
dawn would rise from the arms of the guillotine. Only one thing could
surpass him: the scythe of death which blindly mows the world.

For a few seconds, amidst the growing darkness, cold horror reigned in
the workroom. "Ah!" muttered Guillaume, "he had the daring to do it, he
had."

Pierre, however, lovingly pressed his arm. And he felt that he was as
distracted, as upset, as himself. Perhaps this last abomination had been
needed to ravage and cure him.

Janzen no doubt had been an accomplice in the deed. He was relating that
Victor's purpose had been to avenge Salvat, when all at once a great sigh
of pain was heard in the darkness, followed by a heavy thud upon the
floor. It was Madame Mathis falling like a bundle, overwhelmed by the
news which chance had brought her. At that moment it so happened that
Mere-Grand came down with a lamp, which lighted up the room, and
thereupon they hurried to the help of the wretched woman, who lay there
as pale as a corpse in her flimsy black gown.

And this again brought Pierre an indescribable heart-pang. Ah! the poor,
sad, suffering creature! He remembered her at Abbe Rose's, so discreet,
so shamefaced, in her poverty, scarce able to live upon the slender
resources which persistent misfortunes had left her. Hers had indeed been
a cruel lot: first, a home with wealthy parents in the provinces, a love
story and elopement with the man of her choice; next, ill-luck steadily
pursuing her, all sorts of home troubles, and at last her husband's
death. Then, in the retirement of her widowhood, after losing the best
part of the little income which had enabled her to bring up her son,
naught but this son had been left to her. He