so perfectly serene. And on all sides the passion of trade ascended from
the central districts, where the crowds rolled and scrambled amidst an
everlasting uproar of wheels; while westward, the city of the happy and
powerful ones, those who fought for sovereignty and wealth, spread out
its piles of palaces amidst the slowly reddening flare of the declining
planet.

And then, from the depths of his negation, the chaos into which his loss
of faith had plunged him, Pierre felt a delicious freshness pass like the
vague advent of a new faith. So vague it was that he could not have
expressed even his hope of it in words. But already among the rough
factory workers, manual toil had appeared to him necessary and
redemptive, in spite of all the misery and abominable injustice to which
it led. And now the young men of intellect of whom he had despaired, that
generation of the morrow which he had thought spoilt, relapsing into
ancient error and rottenness, had appeared to him full of virile promise,
resolved to prosecute the work of those who had gone before, and effect,
by the aid of Science only, the conquest of absolute truth and absolute
justice.

V. PROBLEMS

A FULL month had already gone by since Guillaume had taken refuge at his
brother's little house at Neuilly. His wrist was now nearly healed. He
had long ceased to keep his bed, and often strolled through the garden.
In spite of his impatience to go back to Montmartre, join his loved ones
and resume his work there, he was each morning prompted to defer his
return by the news he found in the newspapers. The situation was ever the
same. Salvat, whom the police now suspected, had been perceived one
evening near the central markets, and then again lost sight of. Every
day, however, his arrest was said to be imminent. And in that case what
would happen? Would he speak out, and would fresh perquisitions be made?

For a whole week the press had been busy with the bradawl found under the
entrance of the Duvillard mansion. Nearly every reporter in Paris had
called at the Grandidier factory and interviewed both workmen and master.
Some had even started on personal investigations, in the hope of
capturing the culprit themselves. There was no end of jesting about the
incompetence of the police, and the hunt for Salvat was followed all the
more passionately by the general public, as the papers overflowed with
the most ridiculous concoctions, predicting further explosions, and