rid of
spoiled vegetables and pushing off their shoddy. In the centre of the
city, in the church of Saint Boniface, I found a placard requesting the
faithful, out of respect for the holy place, not to give alms. It was
not seemly, you see, that the commercial orisons be disturbed by the
ridiculous plaints of the indigent."

"Well," said Durtal, "it's a strange thing, but democracy is the most
implacable of the enemies of the poor. The Revolution, which, you would
think, ought to have protected them, proved for them the most cruel of
regimes. I will show you some day a decree of the Year II, pronouncing
penalties not only for those who begged but for those who gave."

"And yet democracy is the panacea which is going to cure every ill,"
said Des Hermies, laughing. And he pointed to enormous posters
everywhere in which General Boulanger peremptorily demanded that the
people of Paris vote for him in the coming election.

Durtal shrugged his shoulders. "Quite true. The people are very sick.
Carhaix and Gevingey are perhaps right in maintaining that no human
agency is powerful enough to effect a cure."

CHAPTER XXI

Durtal had resolved not to answer Mme. Chantelouve's letters. Every day,
since their rupture, she had sent him an inflamed missive, but, as he
soon noticed, her Maenad cries were subsiding into plaints and
reproaches. She now accused him of ingratitude, and repented having
listened to him and having permitted him to participate in sacrileges
for which she would have to answer before the heavenly tribunal. She
pleaded to see him once more. Then she was silent for a while week.
Finally, tired, no doubt, of writing unanswered letters, she admitted,
in a last epistle, that all was over.

After agreeing with him that their temperaments were incompatible, she
ended:

"Thanks for the trig little love, ruled like music-paper, that
you gave me. My heart cannot be so straitly measured, it
requires more latitude--"

"Her heart!" he laughed, then he continued to read:

"I understand that it is not your earthly mission to satisfy my
heart but you might at least have conceded me a frank
comradeship which would have permitted me to leave my sex at
home and to come and spend an evening with you now and then.
This, seemingly, so simple, you have rendered impossible.
Farewell forever. I have only to renew my pact with Solitude, to
which I have tried to be unfaithful--"