ad
been told that life was easy and with abundant opportunity for all
intellects and all energies," he declared at his trial, "but experience
has shown me that only the cynics and the servile can make a place for
themselves at the banquet. I had been told that social institutions were
based on justice and equality, and I have seen about me only lies and
deceit. Each day robbed me of an illusion. Everywhere I went I was
witness of the same sorrows about us, of the same joys about others.
Therefore I was not long in understanding that the words which I had
been taught to reverence--honor, devotion, duty--were nothing but a
veil concealing the most shameful baseness....

"For an instant I was attracted by socialism; but I was not long in
withdrawing myself from that party. I had too much love for liberty, too
much respect for individual initiative, too much dislike for
incorporation to take a number in the registered army of the Fourth
Estate. I brought into the struggle a profound hatred, every day revived
by the repugnant spectacle of this society in which everything is
sordid, ... in which everything hinders the expansion of human passions,
the generous impulses of the heart, the free flight of thought. I have,
however, wished, as far as I was able, to strike forcibly and justly....
In this pitiless war which we have declared on the bourgeoisie we ask no
pity. We give death and know how to suffer it. That is why I await your
verdict with indifference."[11]

In the case of Henry appeals were also made to President Carnot for
mercy, but they, too, were ignored, and Henry was guillotined a few days
after Vaillant. A month or so later, June 25, President Carnot arrived
at Lyons to open an exposition. That evening, while on his way to a
theater, he was stabbed to death by the Italian anarchist, Caserio, on
the handle of whose stiletto was engraved "Vaillant."

This was the climax to the series of awful tragedies. It would be
impossible to picture the utter consternation of the entire French
nation. The characters that had figured in this terrible drama were not
ordinary men. Their addresses before condemnation were so eloquent and
impressive as to awaken lively emotions among the most thoughtful and
brilliant men in France. They challenged society. The judge refused
Decamps a hearing, and Ravachol undertook individually to destroy the
judge. Vaillant, deciding that the lawmakers were responsible for social
injustice, unde