'Sit down, monsieur,' said Sigismond, 'my brother told me that he was only going out for a moment.'
Saccard declined the proffered chair, however, and stood looking at him, struck by the progress which consumption had made in this tall, pale fellow with child-like eyes—eyes with a dim, dreamy expression, passing strange under a forehead which seemed typical of energy and obstinacy. His long wavy hair fell on either side of his face, which had become extremely sunken and emaciated, elongated too and drawn, as it were, towards the grave.
'You have been ill?' remarked Saccard, at a loss what else to say.
Sigismond made a gesture of complete indifference. 'Oh, as usual,' he replied. 'This last week hasn't been a good one on account of the wretched weather. But I get on very well all the same. I no longer sleep, you know, so I can work, and if I have a little fever, why, it keeps me warm. Ah, there is so much to be done!'
He had again seated himself at his table, on which a book in the German language was lying open. 'I must apologise for sitting down,' said he; 'I remained up all night in order to read this book, which I received yesterday. A masterpiece, yes, the fruit of ten years' labour, ten years of the life of my master, Karl Marx. It is the treatise on Capital which he promised us so long ago. So now we here have our Bible.'
Saccard took a step forward to glance inquisitively at the book, but the sight of the Gothic characters at once repelled him. 'I shall wait until it is translated!' he exclaimed, laughing.
The young man shook his head as though to say that even when translated the book would be understood by few excepting the initiated. It was not a work of propaganda. But how wonderfully logical it was, with what a victorious abundance of proofs it showed that existing society, based upon the capitalistic system, would inevitably be destroyed! The ground clear, they would be able to rebuild.
'Then this is the sweep of the broom?' asked Saccard, still jesting.
'In theory, yes,' answered Sigismond. 'All that I one day explained to you, the whole evolution, is in these pages. It only remains for us to carry it out. And you are blind if you do not see the progress which the idea is already making every hour. Thus you, who, with your Universal, have stirred up and centralized hundreds of millions during the last three years, you really don't seem to suspect that you are leading us straight to Collectivism. I have followed your enterprise with passionate interest; yes, from this quiet out-of-the-way room I have studied its development day by day, and I know it as well as you do, and I say that you are giving us a famous lesson; for the collectivist State will only have to do what you are doing, expropriate you in bulk when you have expropriated the smaller capitalists in detail. And in this wise will be realised the ambition of your huge dream, which is, I understand, to absorb all the capital in the world, to become the one bank, the one general warehouse of public wealth. Oh, I admire you very much; I would let you go on if I were the master, because you are beginning our work, like a forerunner of genius!'