Arithelli nodded, "Yes, I heard the men talking about it at one of the meetings. I wasn't interested enough to listen then. Was he—?"
"He was one of our greatest leaders. His death meant something to me, because it was really through him that I joined the Red Flag. He had a life sentence in Eastern Siberia and he escaped from there and got to America. For some time none of us knew exactly where he was, and then we heard rumours that he was dangerously ill at Geneva. Then came news of his death and his funeral in Paris. His friends had decided to bring the body there, so that all the comrades might be present, for there are many anarchists in Paris. They gave him a guard of honour of Russian students, men and women surrounding the coffin with linked hands, and there were hundreds of red roses and red carnations, though it was in the winter—there had been snow on the ground a few days before. There was a crown of thorns from those who had been his companions in prison, and the canopy of the hearse was a red flag. If only I could have been there to do him homage!
"There are all sorts of wild stories about his escape from Siberia. I suppose he bewitched the jailers as he bewitched other men. He was the first man I ever heard speak about the Cause. He came to Vienna and held meetings for the propaganda and collected enormous crowds. I had just begun to take life seriously then, to think about things and to hate injustice.
"My father drank and wasted money and treated his servants brutally. My mother was dead, and when she was alive she was an invalid, and could do nothing. Most of the people I knew seemed to think the serfs no better than animals. I remember how sometimes when we were starting off in the early morning for a boar hunt in the forest, they would come begging and whining round the horses' heels.
"They seldom got anything except a kick or a curse. They looked scarcely human, yet it was ourselves who were the brutes really.
"Well, Guerchouni spoke and I went and listened to him. A friend with whom I had gone to the meetings gave me an introduction to him. I was mad on the Cause long before the interview was over. He was a man that! If he had looked at me twice, I would have walked through flames to please him. Oh, I wasn't the only one! We all felt like that more or less with Guerchouni. I couldn't describe him. He was not a tall man, but he carried himself well, and he was dark and pale with wonderful blazing eyes. One knew him at once, and talked as if one had known him for years.
"Of course I accepted all his theories and doctrines except two. I don't believe in 'L'Union fibre.' (They all do, you know, or nearly all) and I never was an atheist.
"A Catholic and an Anarchist! It sounds impossible, doesn't it, but"—he flushed boyishly—"I believe in Le bon Dieu, and the union libre is hard on women. Yes, I adored Guerchouni. He worked day and night, he feared nothing, he did impossibilities himself and he made us do impossibilities."
"He was like Sobrenski."
"Yes, he was like Sobrenski in some ways. He will be a loss to the
Cause."