e walked through the streets Godefroid felt himself another man.
Whoever could have looked into his being would have admired the curious
phenomenon of the communication of collective power. He was no longer a
mere man, he was a tenfold force, knowing himself the representative of
persons whose united forces upheld his actions and walked beside him.
Bearing that power in his heart, he felt within him a plenitude of life,
a noble might, which uplifted him. It was, as he afterwards said, one
of the finest moments of his whole existence; he was conscious of a new
sense, an omnipotence more sure than that of despots. Moral power is,
like thought, limitless.

"To live for others," he thought, "to act with others, all as one, and
act alone as all together, to have for leader Charity, the noblest, the
most living of those ideal figures Christianity has made for us, this is
indeed to live!--Come, come, repress that petty joy, which father Alain
laughed at. And yet, how singular it is that in seeking to set myself
aside from life I have found the power I have sought so long! Yes, the
world of misery will belong to me!"

XII. A CASE TO INVESTIGATE

Godefroid walked from the cloister of Notre-Dame to the avenue de
l'Observatoire in such a state of exaltation that he never noticed the
length of the way.

When he reached the rue Notre-Dame des Champs at the point where it
joins the rue de l'Ouest he was amazed to find (neither of these streets
being paved at the time of which we write) great mud-holes in that fine
open quarter. Persons walked on planks laid down beside the houses and
along the marshy gardens, or on narrow paths flanked on each side by
stagnant water which sometimes turned them into rivulets.

By dint of searching he found the house he wanted, but he did not
reach it without difficulty. It was evidently an abandoned factory. The
building was narrow and the side of it was a long wall with many windows
and no architectural decoration whatever. None of these windows, which
were square, were on the lower floor, where there was no opening but a
very miserable entrance-door.

Godefroid supposed that the proprietor had turned the building into a
number of small tenements to make it profitable, for a written placard
above the door stated that there were "Several rooms to let." Godefroid
rang, but no one came. While he was waiting, a person who went by
pointed out to him that the house had another entrance on the b