Silence fell again. Josine, Sœurette, and Suzanne, very old, very beautiful, and very good, were, like himself, still dreaming, with their glances wandering afar.
It was at last Josine who began: 'I have heard of things—a traveller told them me,' she said. 'In one great Republic the Collectivists became the masters of power. For years they had waged the most desperate of political battles in order to gain possession of the legislature and the government. And as they were unable to do so in legal fashion, they had recourse to a coup d'état when they felt strong enough for one, and certain of substantial support among the nation. On the morrow, by laws and decrees, they put their entire programme into force. Expropriation en masse began, all private wealth became the wealth of the nation, all the instruments of work reverted to the workers. No landowners, nor capitalists, nor employers were left; the State reigned alone, master of everything, both landowner and capitalist and employer, regulator and distributor of social life. But, of course, that tremendous shock, those sudden radical changes, could not take place without terrible troubles arising. The classes would not allow themselves to be dispossessed even of property they had stolen, and there were frightful outbreaks on all sides. Landowners preferred to get killed on the threshold of their estates. Other people destroyed their property, flooded mines, broke up railroads, annihilated factories and goods, whilst capitalists burnt their scrip and flung their gold into the sea. Certain houses had to be besieged, whole towns had to be taken by assault. That frightful civil war lasted for years, and the pavements of the towns became red with blood, whilst the rivers still and ever carried corpses to the ocean. Then the sovereign State experienced all sorts of difficulties in getting the new order of things to work smoothly. An hour's work became the standard of value, exchanges being facilitated by a system of vouchers. At first a statistical commission was established to watch over production and distribute products in accordance with each person's amount of work. Then other controlling offices were found necessary, and little by little an intricate organisation grew up, impeding the working of the new social system. People fell into a kind of regimentation and barrack life; never had men been penned up in smaller compartments. And yet evolution was taking place, even this was a step towards justice; for work rose to honour once more, and wealth was each day divided with more equity. At the end, assuredly, there lay the disappearance of the wage-system and of capital—the suppression of trade and money. And I have been told that this Collectivist State, ravaged by so many catastrophes, deluged with so much blood, is to-day entering the sphere of peace, coming at last to the fraternal solidarity of the free, working nations.'
Josine ceased speaking, and again relapsed into a mute contemplation of the great horizon. But Luc gently replied: 'Yes, that was one of the bloody paths, one of those which I would not follow. But now, what matters it, since it has led them to the same unity, the same harmony as our own?'
Then Sœurette, still gazing far away, as if exploring the world behind the gigantic promontories of the Bleuse Mountains, in her turn took up the tale: 'I also heard a story—some eye-witnesses told me these frightful things. They happened in a vast neighbouring empire where the Anarchists by means of bombs and shrapnel succeeded in blowing up the old social framework. The people had suffered so dreadfully that they ended by leaguing themselves with the Anarchists in order to complete the liberating work of destruction, and sweep away the last crumbs of the rotten world. For a long time the cities flared like torches in the night, amidst the howling of the old butchers of the people, who in their turn were now being slaughtered, and who did not wish to die. And this was the prophesied deluge of blood, the fruitful necessity of which had long been foretold by the prophets of Anarchy. Afterwards the new times began. The cry was no longer: "To each according to his work," but: "To each according to his needs." Man had a right to life, lodging, clothing, and daily bread. So all the wealth was heaped together and divided, people only being rationed when there was a lack of abundance. But with all mankind at work, and nature exploited scientifically and methodically, there must come incalculable produce, an immense fortune, sufficient to satisfy the appetites of all. When the thieving and parasitic society of olden time had disappeared, together with money, the source of all crimes, and the savage laws of restriction and repression which had been the sources of every iniquity, peace would reign in the Libertarian community, in which the happiness of each would be derived from the happiness of all. And there was to be no more authority of any kind, no more laws, no more government. If the Anarchists had accepted iron and fire as their instruments, believing in the sanguinary necessity of extermination as a first step, it was because they were convinced that they could not utterly destroy monarchical and religious atavism, and for ever crush the last surviving germs of authority, unless the ancient sore should be thus brutally cauterised. In order that one might not be caught in the toils again it was necessary to sever every living link with a past of error and despotism. All politics were evil and poisonous, because they were fatally compounded of compromises and bargains, in which the disinherited were duped. And the lofty, pure dream of Anarchy had sought realisation when the old world had been ruined and swept away. That dream was the broadest and the most ideal conception of a just and peaceful human race, man free in a free state of society, and each man delivered from every hindrance and shackle, living in the full enjoyment of all his senses and faculties, fully exercising his right to live and to be happy through his share in the possession of all the wealth of the earth. But then, Anarchy had gradually become merged into the Communist evolution, for in reality it was only a form of political negation, and simply differed from other kinds of socialism by its determination to throw everything down before building up afresh. It accepted association, the constitution of free groups living by exchanges, constantly circulating, expending their strength and reconstituting themselves, like the very blood of the human body; and thus the great empire where it triumphed amidst massacre and conflagration, has now joined the other freed nations in the universal federation.'
Sœurette ceased speaking and remained motionless and dreamy, with her elbow resting on the back of Luc's arm-chair. He, whose voice was thickening, slowly said: 'Yes, the Anarchists, after the Collectivists, were bound to follow the disciples of Fourier on the last day on reaching the threshold of the promised land. If the roads were different, the goal remained identical.' And after thinking a while he resumed: 'Yet, how many tears, how much blood, how many abominable wars there have been in order to win that fraternal peace which all equally desired! How many centuries of fratricidal slaughter have followed one after the other when the question was simply whether one ought to turn to right or left in order to reach happiness more quickly!'
Then Suzanne, who hitherto had remained silent, and whose eyes also had been wandering beyond the horizon, at last spoke in a voice which quivered with compassion: 'Ah! the last war, the last battle! It was so frightful that when it was over men for ever destroyed their swords and their guns. It took place during the earlier stage of the great social crises which have renewed the world, and I was told of it by men who had well nigh lost their senses amidst that supreme shock of the nations. In that crisis which distracted them, whilst they were pregnant with the future, one-half of Europe rushed upon the other half, and other continents followed them, and fleets of ships battled on all the oceans for dominion over water and earth. Not a single nation was able to remain apart, in a state of neutrality, they all dragged one another forward; and two immense armies entered into line, glowing with hereditary fury, and resolved upon exterminating one another, as if out of every two men there was one too many in the empty, barren fields. And the two huge armies of hostile brothers met in the centre of Europe, on some vast plains where millions of beings had space to murder one another. Over leagues and leagues did the troops deploy, followed by reinforcements; such a torrent of men, indeed, that the battle lasted for a month. Each day that dawned there still remained human flesh for bullets and shells. The combatants did not even take time to remove their dead; the piles of corpses formed walls, behind which new regiments ever advanced in order to get killed. And night did not stay the battle, men murdered one another in the darkness. Each time that the sun arose it illumined yet larger pools of blood, a field of carnage where death in his horrible harvesting piled the corpses of the soldiers in loftier and loftier ricks. And on all sides there was lightning, entire army corps disappeared amidst a clap of thunder. It was not necessary that the combatants should draw near or even see each other, their guns carried long miles, and threw shells which in exploding swept acres of ground bare, and asphyxiated and poisoned all around. Balloons also threw bombs from the very heavens, setting towns ablaze as they passed. Science had invented explosives and murderous engines which carried death over prodigious distances, and annihilated a whole community as suddenly as an earthquake might have done. And what a monstrous massacre showed forth on the last evening of that gigantic battle! Never before had such a huge human sacrifice smoked beneath the heavens! More than a million men lay there in the great ravaged fields, alongside the watercourses, across the meadows. One could walk for hours and hours, and one ever met a yet larger harvest of slaughtered soldiers, who lay there with their eyes wide open, and their black mouths agape, as if to cry aloud that mankind was mad! And that was the last battle, to such a degree did horror freeze every heart when men awakened from that frightful intoxication, born of greed for dominion, lust for power; whilst the conviction came to all that war was no longer possible, since science in its almightiness was destined to be the sovereign creator of life, and not the artisan of destruction.'
Then Suzanne in her turn relapsed into silence, quivering the while, but with bright eyes, radiant indeed with the peace of the future. And Luc, whose voice was becoming a mere breath, concluded: 'Yes, war is dead, the supreme étape has been reached, the brotherly kiss comes after the long, rough, dolorous journey. And my day is over, I can now go to sleep.'
He spoke no more. That last minute was august and sweet. Josine, Sœurette, and Suzanne did not stir, but waited, exempt from sadness, full indeed of tender fervour in that calm room, gay with flowers and sunshine. Under the window the joyous children were still playing—one could hear the shrill cries of the very little ones, and the laughter of their elders, all the mirth of the future on the march to broader and broader joys. And then there was the friendly sun resplendent on the horizon, the sun, the fertiliser, the father, whose creative force had been captured and domesticated. And under the flaring of its rays of glory appeared the glittering roofs of triumphant Beauclair, the busy hive where by a just apportionment of this world's riches regenerated work now only created happy folk. And yet again beyond La Roumagne, and on the other side of the Bleuse Mountains, there was the coming federation of the peoples, the one sole brotherly nation, mankind at last fulfilling its destiny of truth and justice and peace.
Then, for the last time, Luc gazed around him, his glance embracing the town, the horizon, the whole earth, where the evolution which he had started was progressing, and drawing nigh to completion. The work was done, the city was founded. And Luc expired, entered into the torrent of universal love and of everlasting life.