icated that it was Pierre who had
saved him.

Thereupon, in a corner of the room, Marie flung her arms round the young
man's neck. "Ah! my good Pierre, I have never yet kissed you," said she;
"I want it to be for something serious the first time.... I love you,
my good Pierre, I love you with all my heart."

Later that same evening, after night had fallen, Guillaume and Pierre
remained for a moment alone in the big workroom. The young men had gone
out, and Mere-Grand and Marie were upstairs sorting some house linen,
while Madame Mathis, who had brought some work back, sat patiently in a
dim corner waiting for another bundle of things which might require
mending. The brothers, steeped in the soft melancholy of the twilight
hour, and chatting in low tones, had quite forgotten her.

But all at once the arrival of a visitor upset them. It was Janzen with
the fair, Christ-like face. He called very seldom nowadays; and one never
knew from what gloomy spot he had come or into what darkness he would
return when he took his departure. He disappeared, indeed, for months
together, and was then suddenly to be seen like some momentary passer-by
whose past and present life were alike unknown.

"I am leaving to-night," he said in a voice sharp like a knife.

"Are you going back to your home in Russia?" asked Guillaume.

A faint, disdainful smile appeared on the Anarchist's lips. "Home!" said
he, "I am at home everywhere. To begin with, I am not a Russian, and then
I recognise no other country than the world."

With a sweeping gesture he gave them to understand what manner of man he
was, one who had no fatherland of his own, but carried his gory dream of
fraternity hither and thither regardless of frontiers. From some words he
spoke the brothers fancied he was returning to Spain, where some
fellow-Anarchists awaited him. There was a deal of work to be done there,
it appeared. He had quietly seated himself, chatting on in his cold way,
when all at once he serenely added: "By the by, a bomb had just been
thrown into the Cafe de l'Univers on the Boulevard. Three _bourgeois_
were killed."

Pierre and Guillaume shuddered, and asked for particulars. Thereupon
Janzen related that he had happened to be there, had heard the explosion,
and seen the windows of the cafe shivered to atoms. Three customers were
lying on the floor blown to pieces. Two of them were gentlemen, who had
entered the place by chance and whose names were not known,