Sandoz and Bongrand had looked at the scene without saying a word.  Then, having passed the fire, the former resumed: 

’No, he did not prove to be the man of the formula he laid down.  I mean that his genius was not clear enough to enable him to set that formula erect and impose it upon the world by a definite masterpiece.  And now see how other fellows scatter their efforts around him, after him!  They go no farther than roughing off, they give us mere hasty impressions, and not one of them seems to have strength enough to become the master who is awaited.  Isn’t it irritating, this new notion of light, this passion for truth carried as far as scientific analysis, this evolution begun with so much originality, and now loitering on the way, as it were, falling into the hands of tricksters, and never coming to a head, simply because the necessary man isn’t born?  But pooh! the man will be born; nothing is ever lost, light must be.’

‘Who knows? not always,’ said Bongrand.  ’Life miscarries, like everything else.  I listen to you, you know, but I’m a despairer.  I am dying of sadness, and I feel that everything else is dying.  Ah! yes, there is something unhealthy in the atmosphere of the times—­this end of a century is all demolition, a litter of broken monuments, and soil that has been turned over and over a hundred times, the whole exhaling a stench of death!  Can anybody remain in good health amid all that?  One’s nerves become unhinged, the great neurosis is there, art grows unsettled, there is general bustling, perfect anarchy, all the madness of self-love at bay.  Never have people quarrelled more and seen less clearly than since it is pretended that one knows everything.’

Sandoz, who had grown pale, watched the large ruddy coils of smoke rolling in the wind.

‘It was fated,’ he mused in an undertone.  ’Our excessive activity and pride of knowledge were bound to cast us back into doubt.  This century, which has already thrown so much light over the world, was bound to finish amid the threat of a fresh flow of darkness—­yes, our discomfort comes from that!  Too much has been promised, too much has been hoped for; people have looked forward to the conquest and explanation of everything, and now they growl impatiently.  What! don’t things go quicker than that?  What! hasn’t science managed to bring us absolute certainty, perfect happiness, in a hundred years?  Then what is the use of going on, since one will never know everything, and one’s bread will always be as bitter?  It is as if the century had become bankrupt, as if it had failed; pessimism twists people’s bowels, mysticism fogs their brains; for we have vainly swept phantoms away with the light of analysis, the supernatural has resumed hostilities, the spirit of the legends rebels and wants to conquer us, while we are halting with fatigue and anguish.  Ah!  I certainly don’t affirm anything; I myself am tortured.  Only it seems to me that this last convulsion of the old religious terrors was to be foreseen.  We are not the end, we are but a transition, a beginning of something else.  It calms me and does me good to believe that we are marching towards reason, and the substantiality of science.’