“I do not say that you are wrong,” said the Count, “we force nature all the time in cattle-breeding, so that even the shape and instincts of the animals are modified; why not the human creature?  No, far from blaming you, I maintain on the contrary that the object and the duty of every man worthy of the name is, just as you say, to alter human nature.  It is the source of all real progress; even to strive after the impossible has a concrete value.  But that does not mean that we shall succeed in what we undertake.”

“It is possible that we may not succeed for ourselves and our children; it is, even more, probable.  Perhaps our unhappy nation, the entire West is on the downward path.  There are many things that make me fear that we are hastening to our fall; our vices and our virtues, which are almost equally injurious, the pride and hatred, the jealous spite worthy of a big village, the endless chain of revenges, the blind obstinacy, the clinging to the past with its superannuated conceptions of honour and duty, which causes us to sacrifice the future for the past; all these make me fear that the terrible warning of this war has taught nothing to our slothful and turbulent heroism.  There was a time when I should have been overwhelmed by such a thought as this, but now I feel lifted above it, as I am above my own mortal body; the only tie between me and it is made of pity.  My spirit is brother to that which, on the other side of the globe, is now touched by the new fire.  Do you remember the beautiful words of the Seer of St. Jean d’Acre?[1]”

[Footnote 1:  Reference to Abdul Baha, at present the head of the Babists or Bahaists.  He was at that time a prisoner at St. Jean d’Acre.  See “Lessons of St. Jean d’Acre,” by Abdul Baha, collected by Laura Clifford Barney. (Author.)]

“’The Sun of Truth is like our sun.  It rises in many different places.  One day it appears in the sign of Cancer, on another it rises in Libra, but it is always the same sun.  Once the Sun of Truth rose in the constellation of Abraham, and set in that of Moses, flaming over the whole horizon; and later it was seen in the sign of Christ, bright and resplendent.  When its light shone over Sinai, the followers of Abraham were blinded.  But wherever the sun may rise, my eyes will be fixed upon it; even if it should appear in the west it will always be the sun.’”

“‘C’est du Nord aujourd’hui que nous vient la lumiere,’"[1] said Moreau, laughing ("It is from the North that our light comes today").

[Footnote 1:  A famous line of Voltaire’s. (Author.)]

Though the hearing was set for one o’clock, and it was now barely twelve, Clerambault wanted to start at once, he was so afraid of being late.

They had not far to go, and indeed his friends had no need to protect him against the rabble which hung about the Palais de Justice, a crowd which in any case was considerably thinned out by the morning’s news.  There were only a few curs, more noisy than dangerous, who might have snapped at their heels.