part of the crowd, but only
attached to it by their trade. Kings do not now carry royalty
everywhere on their sleeves; they obliterate themselves in the clothes
of everybody. But all the hundred faces of royalty have the same
signs, all of them, and are distinctly repeated through their smiles of
cupidity, rapacity, ferocity.

And there the dark multitude fidgets about. By footpaths and streets
they have come from the country and the town. I see, gazing earnestly,
stiff-set with attention, faces scorched by rude contact with the
seasons or blanched by bad atmospheres; the sharp and mummified face of
the peasant; faces of young men grown bitter before they have come of
age; of women grown ugly before they have come of age, who draw the
little wings of their capes over their faded blouses and faded throats;
the clerks of anemic and timorous career; and the little people with
whom times are so difficult, whom their mediocrity depresses; all that
stirring of backs and shoulders and hanging arms, in poverty dressed up
or naked. Behold their numbers and immense strength. Behold,
therefore, authority and justice. For justice and authority are not
hollow formulas--they are life, the most of life there can be; they are
mankind, they are mankind in all places and all times. These words,
justice and authority, do not echo in an abstract sphere. They are
rooted in the human being. They overflow and palpitate. When I demand
justice, I am not groping in a dream, I am crying from the depths of
all unhappy hearts.

Such are they, that mountain of people heaped on the ground like metal
for the roads, overwhelmed by unhappiness, debased by charity and
asking for it, bound to the rich by urgent necessity, entangled in the
wheels of a single machine, the machine of frightful repetition. And
in that multitude I also place nearly all young people, whoever they
are, because of their docility and their general ignorance. These
lowly people form an imposing mass as far as one may see, yet each of
them is hardly anything, because he is isolated. It is almost a
mistake to count them; what you see when you look at the multitude is
an immensity made of nothing.

And the people of to-day--overloaded with gloom and intoxicated with
prejudice--see blood, because of the red hangings of rostrums; they are
fascinated by the sparkle of diamonds, of necklaces, of decorations, of
the eyeglasses of the intellectuals. They have eyes but they