people."

This speech was received with applause. The government of the Republic
remained in subjection to the great financial companies, the army was
exclusively devoted to the defence of capital, while the fleet was
designed solely to procure fresh orders for the mine-owners. Since the
rich refused to pay their just share of the taxes, the poor, as in the
past, paid for them.

In the mean time from the height of his old steamline, beneath the
crowded stars of night, Bidault-Coquille gazed sadly at the sleeping
city. Maniflore had left him. Consumed with a desire for fresh devotions
and fresh sacrifices, she had gone in company with a young Bulgarian
to bear justice and vengeance to Sofia. He did not regret her, having
perceived after the Affair, that she was less beautiful in form and in
thought than he had at first imagined. His impressions had been modified
in the same direction concerning many other forms and many other
thoughts. And what was cruelest of all to him, he regarded himself as
not so great, not so splendid, as he had believed.

And he reflected:

"You considered yourself sublime when you had but candour and good-will.
Of what were you proud, Bidault-Coquille? Of having been one of the
first to know that Pyrot was innocent and Greatauk a scoundrel. But
three-fourths of those who defended Greatauk against the attacks of the
seven hundred Pyrotists knew that better than you. Of what then did you
show yourself so proud? Of having dared to say what you thought? That
is civic courage, and, like military courage, it is a mere result of
imprudence. You have been imprudent. So far so good, but that is
no reason for praising yourself beyond measure. Your imprudence was
trifling; it exposed you to trifling perils; you did not risk your head
by it. The Penguins have lost that cruel and sanguinary pride which
formerly gave a tragic grandeur to their revolutions; it is the fatal
result of the weakening of beliefs and character. Ought one to look
upon oneself as a superior spirit for having shown a little more
clear-sightedness than the vulgar? I am very much afraid, on the
contrary, Bidault-Coquille, that you have given proof of a gross
misunderstanding of the conditions of the moral and intellectual
development of a people. You imagined that social injustices were
threaded together like pearls and that it would be enough to pull off
one in order to unfasten the whole necklace. That is a very ingenuous
conceptio