rhaps, be a mother.

Lower down, an apprentice is devouring an officer's uniform with his
gaze. He stands there hypnotized; and the sky-blue and beautiful
crimson come off on his eyes. At that moment I saw clearly that beauty
in uniforms is still more wicked than stupid.

Ah! That frightful prophecy locked up within me is hammering my skull,
"I have confidence in the abyss of the people."

* * * * * *

Wounded by everything I see, I sink down in a corner. Truth is simple;
but the world is no longer simple. There are so many things! How will
truth ever change its defeat into victory? How is it ever going to
heal all those who do not know! I grieve that I am weak and
ineffective, that I am only I. On earth, alas, truth is dumb, and the
heart is only a stifled cry!

I look for support, for some one who does not leave me alone. I am too
much alone, and I look eagerly. But there is only Brisbille!

There is only that tipsy automaton; that parody of a man.

There he is. Close by he is more drunk than in the distance!
Drunkenness bedaubs him; his eyes are filled with wine, his cheeks are
like baked clay, his nose like a baked apple, he is almost blinded by
viscous tufts. In the middle of that open space he seems caught in a
whirlpool. It happens that he is in front of me for a moment, and he
hurls at my head some furious phrases in which I recognize, now and
again, the truths in which I believe! Then, with antics at once
desperate and too heavy for him, he tries to perform some kind of
pantomime which represents the wealthy class, round-paunched as a bag
of gold, sitting on the proletariat till their noses are crushed in the
gutter, and proclaiming, with their eyes up to heaven and their hands
on their hearts, "And above all, no more class-wars!" There is
something alarming in the awkwardness of the grimacing object begotten
by that obstructed brain. It seems as if real suffering is giving
voice through him with a beast's cry.

When he has spoken, he collapses on to a stone. With his fist, whose
leather is covered with red hair, like a cow's, he hides the squalid
face that looks as if it had been spat upon. "Folks aren't wicked," he
says, "but they're stupid, stupid, stupid."

And Brisbille cries.

Just then Father Piot advances into the space, with his silver aureole,
his benevolent smile, and the vague and continuous lisping which
trickles from his lips. He s