, breaks, kills, exterminates. It is a battering-ram which assaults a
wall at its own caprice. Moreover, the battering-ram is metal, the wall
wood. It is the entrance of matter into liberty.

One might say that this eternal slave avenges itself. It seems as if the
power of evil hidden in what we call inanimate objects finds a vent and
bursts suddenly out. It has an air of having lost patience, of seeking
some fierce, obscure retribution; nothing more inexorable than this rage
of the inanimate.

The mad mass has the bounds of a panther, the weight of the elephant, the
agility of the mouse, the obstinacy of the ox, the unexpectedness of the
surge, the rapidity of lightning, the deafness of the tomb. It weighs ten
thousand pounds, and it rebounds like a child's ball. Its flight is a wild
whirl abruptly cut at right angles. What is to be done? How to end this?

A tempest ceases, a cyclone passes, a wind falls, a broken mast is
replaced, a leak is stopped, a fire dies out; but how to control this
enormous brute of bronze? In what way can one attack it?

You can make a mastiff hear reason, astound a bull, fascinate a boa,
frighten a tiger, soften a lion; but there is no resource with that
monster--a cannon let loose. You cannot kill it--for it is dead; while at
the same time it lives. It lives with a sinister life bestowed on it by
Infinity.

The planks beneath it give it play. It is moved by the ship, which is
moved by the sea, which is moved by the wind. This destroyer is a
plaything. The ship, the waves, the blasts, all aid it; hence its
frightful vitality. How to assail this fury of complication? How to fetter
this monstrous mechanism for wrecking a ship? How foresee its comings and
goings, its returns, its stops, its shocks? Any one of these blows upon
the sides may stave out the vessel. How divine its awful gyrations! One
has to deal with a projectile which thinks, seems to possess ideas, and
which changes its direction at each instant. How stop the course of
something which must be avoided?

The horrible cannon flings itself about, advances, recoils, strikes to the
right, strikes to the left, flees, passes, disconcerts ambushes, breaks
down obstacles, crushes men like flies. The great danger of the situation
is in the mobility of its base. How combat an inclined plane which has
blind caprices? The ship, so to speak, has lightning imprisoned in its
womb which seeks to escape; it is like thunder rolling above an
ea