g the powerful and the powers that be!

"Truth is revolutionary! Get you gone, truth-bearers! Away with you,
reformers! You bring in the reign of men!"

That cry was thrown into my ears one tortured night, like a whisper
from deeps below, when he of the broken wings was dying, when he
struggled tumultuously against the opening of men's eyes; but I had
always heard it round about me, always.

In official speeches, sometimes, at moments of great public flattery,
they speak like the reformers, but that is only the diplomacy which
aims at felling them better. They force the light-bearers to hide
themselves and their torches. These dreamers, these visionaries, these
star-gazers,--they are hooted and derided. Laughter is let loose
around them, machine-made laughter, quarrelsome and beastly:--

"Your notion of peace is only utopian, anyway, as long as you never,
any day, stopped the war by yourself!"

They point to the battlefield and its wreckage:--

"And you say that War won't be forever? Look, driveler!"

The circle of the setting sun is crimsoning the mingled horizon of
humanity:--

"You say that the sun is bigger than the earth? Look, imbecile!"

They are anathema, they are sacrilegious, they are excommunicated, who
impeach the magic of the past and the poison of tradition. And the
thousand million victims themselves scoff at and strike those who
rebel, as soon as they are able. All cast stones at them, all, even
those who suffer and while they are suffering--even the sacrificed, a
little before they die.

The bleeding soldiers of Wagram cry: "Long live the emperor!" And the
mournful exploited in the streets cheer for the defeat of those who are
trying to alleviate a suffering which is brother to theirs. Others,
prostrate in resignation, look on, and echo what is said above them:
"After us the deluge," and the saying passes across town and country in
one enormous and fantastic breath, for they are innumerable who murmur
it. Ah, it was well said:

"I have confidence in the abyss of the people."

* * * * * *

And I?

I, the normal man? What have I done on earth? I have bent the knee to
the forces which glitter, without seeking to know whence they came and
whither they guide. How have the eyes availed me that I had to see
with, the intelligence that I had to judge with?

Borne down by shame, I sobbed, "I don't know," and I cried out so
loudly that it seem