"Unfortunately, you are. You know absolutely nothing with which to buy your liberty. What I have told you will be of no service: it will be already theirs. If you wish to go to Belgium ask at No. 33 Rue Lafitte for a travelling suit: you will receive one like mine."
He looked down at his heavy shoes, soiled overalls and tattered blouse, then touching the latter with his fingers, continued: "I use it now for a disguise, but the day will come when this blouse will be our standard—the laborer shall possess the earth. He who works shall live, and idleness, with the riches that foster it, will end. Necessities shall be plenty and luxuries unattainable. Palaces shall fall to give material for poor men's dwellings; monuments that glorify one man at the expense of his brothers must disappear; and churches, promises of another world, can no longer trick us out of our share, our birthright, in this. Paris will arise a new and better Sparta. Sparta, great mother of communes! I salute you! Leonidas! Favart aspires to eclipse your glory! Not for one nation does he labor, but for humanity—for the workers of the world, whose rightful dues are filched from them by the drones. Nature resents this wrong: the drones must die."
He had risen as he pronounced these words, low but rapidly: a moment he stood before me, his face glowing, his hand clenched, then his expression rapidly changed, and he said briefly, "It is a time for action, not for words. Good-night!"
A conflagration, an electric spark, was this shabby man, and I could easily believe what I afterward heard of his influence with the people.
He left me with my mind more perplexed than ever. What had been the coup these people were meditating, in which I, in the eyes of the police, was implicated? Murder? Treason? Arson? Nothing was beyond them with their magnificent sympathies. Perhaps this might be my only chance of escape; yet in doing so did I not cast my lot with theirs? should I not make myself doubly suspected? Embarrassing questions, to which neither self was ready with an answer. There was the prospect, too, of losing my situation if I remained long away, but in opposition to this practical consideration was the remembrance of my air-bath and the doubt about my future if I remained. In this chaos of thought can you guess what decided me? It was Favart's words: "We are all going." Did not we include her whom he called Sidonia, who had visited my room and had insisted I should be warned? Yes.
Not in disguise: I was in no humor to complicate the situation. Having my passport in my pocket, and knowing the policeman who was watching me would not prevent my flight, I simply walked to the station and took a first-class ticket to Brussels. First class, for I knew the man in the blouse must travel third, and I was anxious to be as far from him as possible.
I reached the frontier in safety. My examination ended, the officer turned to my only travelling companion, a lady who up to this time appeared to have been sleeping. As he threw the light of his lantern into her face I also looked at her. Good Heavens! could I be mistaken? The hair, it is true, was blond, and the dress a robe of deep mourning, but the eyes were the eyes of my portrait, the eyes of Favart, the eyes of my pretty washerwoman—Sidonia! The ordeal passed, the door shut, the train moved on.
"Have I your permission to speak, mademoiselle?" I asked in an agitated voice.
"If you wish, monsieur." She turned toward me a sad, tear-stained face that well suited her mourning.
"You are suffering: you have been weeping. Has anything occurred? Why this dress?"