“I could not refrain from reproaching Bissolo severely for calumniating the French public. He replied that he was a sociologist, that his Socialism was based on science, and that he had a little box at home filled with actual facts minutely classified, which enabled him to bring about a methodical revolution. And he added: ‘Science, and not the people, possesses sovereign power. A stupidity repeated by thirty-six millions of mouths does not for that reason cease to be stupid. Majorities, as a general rule, display a superior capacity for servitude. Among the weak, weakness is multiplied in proportion to number. Mobs are always inert. They possess a little energy only when they are starving. I can prove to you that on the morning of the 10th of August, 1792, the people of Paris were still Royalists. I have been addressing public meetings for ten years and have had my share of hard blows. The education of the people has hardly commenced; that is the fact of the matter. In the brain of the working man, in the place where the bourgeois carry their inept and brutal prejudices, there is a great cavity. That has got to be filled. We shall do it. It will take a long time. In the meanwhile it is better to have an empty head than one filled with toads and serpents. All this is scientific fact; it’s all in my box. It is all in accordance with the laws of evolution. Nevertheless the general poltroonery disgusts me. And in your place it would frighten me. Look at your partisans, the defenders of the sword and the Church, did you ever see anything so flabby, so gelatinous?’ Having spoken, he stretched out his arms, gave a wild cry of ‘Long live Socialism!’ plunged head foremost in the enormous crowd, and disappeared in the sea of people.”
Joseph Lacrisse, who had listened without enthusiasm to this long story, asked whether Citizen Bissolo wasn’t merely an animal.
“On the contrary, he is a very clever man,” replied Henri Léon, “the sort of man one would like to have as a neighbour in the country, as Bismarck used to say of Lassalle. Bissolo spoke only too truly when he said that you may lead a horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink.”
CHAPTER XII
Madame de Bonmont conceived of love as an abyss of delight. After that dinner at the Madrid, glorified as it had been by the reading of the royal letter, she had said to Joseph Lacrisse as they returned from the Bois, while the carriage was still warm with an historic embrace: “This will be for ever!” and these words, meaningless as they will seem if we consider the impermanence of the elements which make up the substance of the erotic emotions, were none the less indicative of a proper spirituality and of a longing for the infinite which conferred a certain distinction. “Quite!” had been the answer of Joseph Lacrisse.
Two weeks had passed since that happy night, two weeks during which the secretary of the Departmental Committee of Young Royalists had divided his time between the demands of his work and those of his love. Dressed in a tailor-made costume, her face covered with a white lace veil, the Baronne had come, at the appointed hour, to the first-floor flat of a discreet little house in the Rue Lord-Byron. Here were three rooms which she had herself furnished with a heart full of tenderness, hanging them with that celestial blue which had formerly figured in her forgotten love-affair with Raoul Marcien.
She found Joseph Lacrisse well-mannered, proud and even a little shy. He was young and charming, but not exactly what she had wanted. He was gloomy and seemed uneasy. With his frowning brows and thin tightly-closed lips he would have reminded her of Rara, had she not possessed to the full the delightful faculty of forgetting the past. She knew that if he was anxious it was not without cause. She knew that he was a conspirator and that it fell to his share to hoodwink the prefect and the chief Republicans of a very populous department; and she knew that in this enterprise he was risking his liberty and his life for the sake of King and Church. It was precisely because he was a conspirator that she had first loved him. But now she would have liked him to be more cheerful and more affectionate. He welcomed her warmly enough, however, saying:
“It is an intoxication to see you! For the last fortnight I have positively been walking in a starry dream.” And he had added: “How delicious you are!”