"Well, what next?"
"The day will come when society will regard it as a crime to allow children to grow up who are hopelessly destined to suffering—such as weaklings, monsters, hunchbacks, and the other deformed. The State will suppress them."
His companion groaned in horror.
"More than that," Goursac contended, "the day will come when the aged, the infirm, the decrepit, the mortally stricken, will be painlessly released from their suffering. Yes, death, when inevitable, will be made instantaneous, and society will approve."
"And how soon do you expect this magnificent idea to fructify?" Barabant asked scornfully.
"In about two thousand years," Goursac answered, with a hitch of his head. "That is the time necessary for an idea to conquer society."
"My dear friend, you are either joking or mad."
"The condition of prophecy is to be scorned," the theorist said dryly. "You remember Cassandra."
They entered the Place du Carrousel, where the guillotine, whether by conscious or unconscious irony, was established under the frowning shadows of the abode of kings. The dim square was hidden by a loose, shifting network of variegated colors dominated by the bright flecks of countless liberty-caps, which, in measure, as new groups arrived, contracted into mists of red. Above this bobbing field of heads two thin shafts started upward, nearly lost in the descending dusk. Goursac, extending his hand in the direction of these, said: