Spiridion_ to the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, then, we have this
series of fantastical novels with ghosts, subterranean passages, secret
hiding-places, hallucinations and apparitions. The unfortunate part is
that at present we scarcely know to what category of readers they would
appeal. As regards grown-up people, we all prefer something with a
vestige of truth in it now-a-days. As to our children, they would prefer
_Monte-Cristo_ to _Consuelo_, and _Tom Thumb_ to _Spiridion_. At the
time that they were written, in spite of the fact that Buloz protested
against all this philosophy, these novels were quite in accordance with
the public taste. A mania for anything fantastic had taken possession
of the most serious people. Ballanche wrote his _La Palingenesie_, and
Edgar Quinet _Ahasverus_. Things took place through the ages, and the
reader travelled through the immensity of the centuries, just as though
Wells had already invented his machine for exploring time. In a country
like France, where clear-mindedness and matter-of-fact intelligence are
appreciated, all this seems surprising. It was no doubt the result of
infiltrations which had come from abroad. There was something wrong with
us just then, "something rotten in the kingdom of France." We see this
by that fever of socialistic doctrines which burst forth among us about
the year 1840. We have the _Phalanstere_ by Fourier, _La Phalange_
by Considerant, the _Icarie_ by Cabet, and his famous _Voyage_, which
appeared that very year. We were always to be devoured by the State,
accompanied by whatever sauce we preferred. The State was always to find
us shelter, to dress us, to govern us and to tyrannize over us. There
was the State as employer, the State as general storekeeper, the State
to feed us; all this was a dream of bliss. Buonarotti, formerly Babeuf's
accomplice, preached Communism. Louis Blanc published his _Organisation
du travail_, in which he calls to his aid a political revolution,
foretaste of a social revolution. Proudhon published his _Memoire sur la
propriete_, containing the celebrated phrase: "Property means theft."
He declared himself an anarchist, and as a matter of fact anarchy was
already everywhere. A fresh evil had suddenly made its appearance, and,
by a cruel irony, it was the logical consequence of that industrial
development of which the century was so proud. The result of all that
wealth had been to create a new form of misery, an envious, jealous f