The responsibilities? Now for Bernard Saisset they were exactly the
primordial question; he was obstinate in disentangling that knot of
snakes; or rather, like a little Fury, he brandished the snakes above
his head. A frail boy, distinguished looking, impassioned, too many
nerves, burning with a too lively sensitiveness of the brain, belonging
to the wealthy _bourgeoisie_ and an old republican family which had
played a part in the highest offices of State, he professed, through
reaction, all the ultra-revolutionary passions. He had inspected too
near at hand the masters of the day and what they brought forth. He
accused all the governments--and by preference his own. He talked of
nothing any more but of syndicalists and bolsheviki; he had just made a
discovery of them and he fraternized with them, as if he had known them
from infancy. Without knowing too well which, he saw no remedy save in a
total upset of society. He hated war; but he would have sacrificed
himself with joy in a war between classes--a war against his own class,
a war against himself.

The fourth in the group, Claude Puget, sat by at these jousts of words
with a cold and somewhat disdainful attention. Coming from the very
undermost _bourgeoisie_, poor, uprooted from his province by a passing
inspector of schools who remarked his intelligence, prematurely deprived
of the intimate influence of his family, this winner of a _Lycee_
scholarship, accustomed to depend upon himself alone, to live only with
himself, merely lived by himself and for himself. An egotistic
philosopher given to analysis of the soul, voluptuously immersed in his
introspection like a big cat curled up in a ball, he was not moved at
all by the agitation of the others. These three friends of his who never
could agree among themselves he put in the same bag--with the
"populars." Did not all three forfeit their social rank by wishing to
partake in the aspirations of the mob? Truth to say, the mob was a
different crowd for each of them. But for Puget the crowd, whatever it
might be, was always wrong. The crowd was the enemy. The intellect
should remain alone and follow its particular laws and found, apart from
the vulgar crowd and the State, the small and closed kingdom of thought.

And Pierre, seated near the window, distractedly looked out of doors,
and dreamed. Generally speaking, he mingled in these juvenile assaults
with passion. But today it seemed to him a humming of idle words whi