he mind soars wildly. Ah! I think I know that man well
indeed! He's a good workman, sober and courageous. Injustice has always
exasperated him. And little by little the desire for universal happiness
has cast him out of the realities of life which he has ended by holding
in horror. So how can he do otherwise than live in a dream--a dream of
redemption, which, from circumstances, has turned to fire and murder as
its fitting instruments. As I looked at him standing there, I fancied I
could picture one of the first Christian slaves of ancient Rome. All the
iniquity of olden pagan society, agonising beneath the rottenness born of
debauchery and covetousness, was weighing on his shoulders, bearing him
down. He had come from the dark Catacombs where he had whispered words of
deliverance and redemption with his wretched brethren. And a thirst for
martyrdom consumed him, he spat in the face of Caesar, he insulted the
gods, he fired the pagan temples, in order that the reign of Jesus might
come and abolish servitude. And he was ready to die, to be torn to pieces
by the wild beasts!"

Pierre did not immediately reply. He had already been struck, however, by
the fact that there were undoubted points of resemblance between the
secret propaganda and militant faith of the Anarchists, and certain
practices of the first Christians. Both sects abandon themselves to a new
faith in the hope that the humble may thereby at last reap justice.
Paganism disappears through weariness of the flesh and the need of a more
lofty and pure faith. That dream of a Christian paradise opening up a
future life with a system of compensations for the ills endured on earth,
was the outcome of young hope dawning at its historic hour. But to-day,
when eighteen centuries have exhausted that hope, when the long
experiment is over and the toiler finds himself duped and still and ever
a slave, he once more dreams of getting happiness upon this earth,
particularly as each day Science tends more and more to show him that the
happiness of the spheres beyond is a lie. And in all this there is but
the eternal struggle of the poor and the rich, the eternal question of
bringing more justice and less suffering to the world.

"But surely," Pierre at last replied, "you can't be on the side of those
bandits, those murderers whose savage violence horrifies me. I let you
talk on yesterday, when you dreamt of a great and happy people, of ideal
anarchy in which each would be free