aw that Guillaume was changed, that the
terrible gust of revolutionary contagion sweeping over Paris had
transformed him. It had all come from the duality of his nature, the
presence of contradictory elements within him. On one side one found a
scientist whose whole creed lay in observation and experiment, who, in
dealing with nature, evinced the most cautious logic; while on the other
side was a social dreamer, haunted by ideas of fraternity, equality and
justice, and eager for universal happiness. Thence had first come the
theoretical anarchist that he had been, one in whom science and chimeras
were mingled, who dreamt of human society returning to the harmonious law
of the spheres, each man free, in a free association, regulated by love
alone. Neither Theophile Morin with the doctrines of Proudhon and Comte,
nor Bache with those of St. Simon and Fourier, had been able to satisfy
his desire for the absolute. All those systems had seemed to him
imperfect and chaotic, destructive of one another, and tending to the
same wretchedness of life. Janzen alone had occasionally satisfied him
with some of his curt phrases which shot over the horizon, like arrows
conquering the whole earth for the human family. And then in Guillaume's
big heart, which the idea of want, the unjust sufferings of the lowly and
the poor exasperated, Salvat's tragic adventure had suddenly found place,
fomenting supreme rebellion. For long weeks he had lived on with
trembling hands, with growing anguish clutching at his throat. First had
come that bomb and the explosion which still made him quiver, then the
vile cupidity of the newspapers howling for the poor wretch's head, then
the search for him and the hunt through the Bois de Boulogne, till he
fell into the hands of the police, covered with mud and dying of
starvation. And afterwards there had been the assize court, the judges,
the gendarmes, the witnesses, the whole of France arrayed against one man
and bent on making him pay for the universal crime. And finally, there
had come the guillotine, the monstrous, the filthy beast consummating
irreparable injustice in human justice's name. One sole idea now remained
to Guillaume, that idea of justice which maddened him, leaving naught in
his mind save the thought of the just, avenging flare by which he would
repair the evil and ensure that which was right for all time forward.
Salvat had looked at him, and contagion had done its work; he glowed with
a des