I believe, in spite of all, in truth’s victory.  I believe in the momentous value, hereafter inviolable, of those few truly fraternal men in all the countries of the world, who, in the oscillation of national egoisms let loose, stand up and stand out, steadfast as the glorious statues of Right and Duty.  To-night I believe—­nay, I am certain—­that the new order will be built upon that archipelago of men.  Even if we have still to suffer as far as we can see ahead, the idea can no more cease to throb and grow stronger than the human heart can; and the will which is already rising here and there they can no longer destroy.

I proclaim the inevitable advent of the universal republic.  Not the transient backslidings, nor the darkness and the dread, nor the tragic difficulty of uplifting the world everywhere at once will prevent the fulfillment of international truth.  But if the great powers of darkness persist in holding their positions, if they whose clear cries of warning should be voices crying in the wilderness—­O you people of the world, you the unwearying vanquished of History, I appeal to your justice and I appeal to your anger.  Over the vague quarrels which drench the strands with blood, over the plunderers of shipwrecks, over the jetsam and the reefs, and the palaces and monuments built upon the sand, I see the high tide coming.  Truth is only revolutionary by reason of error’s disorder.  Revolution is Order.

* * * * * *

CHAPTER XXIII

FACE TO FACE

Through the panes I see the town—­I often take refuge at the windows.  Then I go into Marie’s bedroom, which gives a view of the country.  It is such a narrow room that to get to the window I must touch her tidy little bed, and I think of her as I pass it.  A bed is something which never seems either so cold or so lifeless as other things; it lives by an absence.

Marie is working in the house, downstairs.  I hear sounds of moved furniture, of a broom, and the recurring knock of the shovel on the bucket into which she empties the dust she has collected.  That society is badly arranged which forces nearly all women to be servants.  Marie, who is as good as I am, will have spent her life in cleaning, in stooping amid dust and hot fumes, over head and ears in the great artificial darkness of the house.  I used to find it all natural.  Now I think it is all anti-natural.

I hear no more sounds.  Marie has finished.  She comes up beside me.  We have sought each other and come together as often as possible since the day when we saw so clearly that we no longer loved each other!

We sit closely side by side, and watch the end of the day.  We can see the last houses of the town, in the beginning of the valley, low houses within enclosures, and yards, and gardens stocked with sheds.  Autumn is making the gardens quite transparent, and reducing them to nothing through their trees and hedges; yet here and there foliage still magnificently flourishes.  It is not the wide landscape in its entirety which attracts me.  It is more worth while to pick out each of the houses and look at it closely.