the
subterranean workmen who lived in hellish mines. How white and fresh is
the complexion of that young woman against her corsage of pink satin!
But who had woven that satin? The human spider of Lyons, the weaver,
always at his trade in the leprous houses of the Croix Rousse. She wears
in her tiny ears two beautiful pearls. What brilliancy! what opaline
transparence! Almost perfect spheres! The pearl which Cleopatra
dissolved in vinegar and swallowed, and which was worth ten thousand
sesterces, was not more pure. But does she know, that young woman, that
in far-off Ceylon, on the pearl-oyster banks of Arripo and Condatchy,
the Indians of the Indian Company plunge heroically down in twelve
fathoms of water, one foot in the heavy stone weight which drags them
down to the bottom, a knife in the left hand for defence against the
shark?

* * * * *

But what of that? One is lovely and coquettish. The air of the
dining-hall is warm and perfumed. There one can dine gaily, adorned and
half nude, flirting with one's neighbors. What has one to do, I ask you,
with a dark workman, who digs fifty feet under the ground, with a weaver
sitting with stiffened joints before the loom, with a savage who emerges
from the sea and sometimes reddens it with his blood? Why should one
think of things so sad, so ugly? What an absurdity!

Meanwhile the Dreamer pursued his train of thought.

An instant ago, without taking thought, mechanically he crumbled on the
cloth a bit of the gilded bread which was placed near his napkin. As a
viand, a mere bit of fancy, insignificant in such a repast, it made him
think of the _naif_ phrase of the great lady concerning the starving
wretches--"Let them eat cake." Nevertheless, this little cake is bread
all the same--bread made of flour, which in turn is made of wheat. Great
heaven! yes, it is bread, simply bread, like the loaf of the peasant,
like the bran-roll of the soldier; and that it might be here, on the
table of the rich, required the patient labor of many poor.

The peasant labored, sowed, reaped. He pushed his plough or led his
harrow across the fertile field, under the cold needles of the autumn
rain; he started from sleep, full of terror for his crop, when it
thundered by night; he trembled, seeing the passage of great violet
clouds charged with hail; he went forth, dissatisfied and gloomy, to the
heavy work and exhausting labor of harvest.

And when the old mill