After the crime of Victor Mathis, who had been tried and executed within
three weeks, Monferrand had suddenly fallen from power. What was the use
of having a strong-handed man at the head of the Government if bombs
still continued to terrify the country? Moreover, he had displeased the
Chamber by his voracious appetite, which had prevented him from allowing
others more than an infinitesimal share of all the good things. And this
time he had been succeeded by Vignon, although the latter's programme of
reforms had long made people tremble. He, Vignon, was honest certainly,
but of all these reforms he had only been able to carry out a few
insignificant ones, for he had found himself hampered by a thousand
obstacles. And thus he had resigned himself to ruling the country as
others had done; and people had discovered that after all there were but
faint shades of difference between him and Monferrand.

"You know that Monferrand is being spoken of again?" said Guillaume.

"Yes, and he has some chance of success. His creatures are bestirring
themselves tremendously," replied Bache, adding, in a bitter, jesting
way, that Mege, the Collectivist leader, played the part of a dupe in
overthrowing ministry after ministry. He simply gratified the ambition of
each coterie in turn, without any possible chance of attaining to power
himself.

Thereupon Guillaume pronounced judgment. "Oh! well, let them devour one
another," said he. "Eager as they all are to reign and dispose of power
and wealth, they only fight over questions of persons. And nothing they
do can prevent the evolution from continuing. Ideas expand, and events
occur, and, over and above everything else, mankind is marching on."

Pierre was greatly struck by these words, and he again recalled the past.
His dolorous Parisian experiment had begun, and he was once more roaming
through the city. Paris seemed to him to be a huge vat, in which a world
fermented, something of the best and something of the worst, a frightful
mixture such as sorceresses might have used; precious powders mingled
with filth, from all of which was to come the philter of love and eternal
youth. And in that vat Pierre first marked the scum of the political
world: Monferrand who strangled Barroux, who purchased the support of
hungry ones such as Fonsegue, Duthil and Chaigneux, who made use of those
who attained to mediocrity, such as Taboureau and Dauvergne; and who
employed even the sectarian passions of