alive and it's powerful like the sun,
like that great sun shining yonder over Paris, and ripening men and
things. And Paris too is a motor, a boiler in which the future is
boiling, while we scientists keep the eternal flame burning underneath.
Guillaume, my good fellow, you are one of the stokers, one of the
artisans of the future, with that little marvel of yours, which will
still further extend the influence of our great Paris over the whole
world."

These words impressed Pierre, and he again thought of a gigantic vat
stretching yonder from one horizon to the other, a vat in which the
coming century would emerge from an extraordinary mixture of the
excellent and the vile. But now, over and above all passions, ambitions,
stains and waste, he was conscious of the colossal expenditure of labour
which marked the life of Paris, of the heroic manual efforts in
work-shops and factories, and the splendid striving of the young men of
intellect whom he knew to be hard at work, studying in silence,
relinquishing none of the conquests of their elders, but glowing with
desire to enlarge their domain. And in all this Paris was exalted,
together with the future that was being prepared within it, and which
would wing its flight over the world bright like the dawn of day. If
Rome, now so near its death, had ruled the ancient world, it was Paris
that reigned with sovereign sway over the modern era, and had for the
time become the great centre of the nations as they were carried on from
civilisation to civilisation, in a sunward course from east to west.
Paris was the world's brain. Its past so full of grandeur had prepared it
for the part of initiator, civiliser and liberator. Only yesterday it had
cast the cry of Liberty among the nations, and to-morrow it would bring
them the religion of Science, the new faith awaited by the democracies.
And Paris was also gaiety, kindness and gentleness, passion for knowledge
and generosity without limit. Among the workmen of its faubourgs and the
peasants of its country-sides there were endless reserves of men on whom
the future might freely draw. And the century ended with Paris, and the
new century would begin and spread with it. All the clamour of its
prodigious labour, all the light that came from it as from a beacon
overlooking the earth, all the thunder and tempest and triumphant
brightness that sprang from its entrails, were pregnant with that final
splendour, of which human happiness would