he expected to find in the documents he submitted to him proofs of certain
guilt and obvious criminality. After lengthened difficulties and repeated

refusals on the part of General Julep, Justice Chaussepied was allowed to
examine the documents. Numbered and initialed they ran to the number of

fourteen millions six hundred and twenty-six thousand three hundred and
twelve. As he studied them the judge was at first surprised, then astonished,

then stupefied, amazed, and, if I dare say so, flabbergasted. He found among
the documents prospectuses of new fancy shops, newspapers, fashion-plates,

paper bags, old business letters, exercise books, brown paper, green paper for
rubbing parquet floors, playing cards, diagrams, six thousand copies of the

"Key to Dreams," but not a single document in which any mention was made of
Pyrot.

XI. CONCLUSION
The appeal was allowed, and Pyrot was brought down from his cage. But the

Anti-Pyrotists did not regard themselves as beaten. The military judges
re-tried Pyrot. Greatauk, in this second affair, surpassed himself. He

obtained a second conviction; he obtained it by declaring that the proofs
communicated to the Supreme Court were worth nothing, and that great care had

been taken to keep back the good ones, since they ought to remain secret. In
the opinion of connoisseurs he had never shown so much address. On leaving the

court, as he passed through the vestibule with a tranquil step, and his hands
behind his back, amidst a crowd of sight-seers, a woman dressed in red and

with her face covered by a black veil rushed at him, brandishing a kitchen
knife.

"Die, scoundrel!" she cried. It was Maniflore. Before those present could
understand what was happening, the general seized her by the wrist, and with

apparent gentleness, squeezed it so forcibly that the knife fell from her
aching hand.

Then he picked it up and handed it to Maniflore.
"Madam," said he with a bow, "you have dropped a household utensil."

He could not prevent the heroine from being taken to the police-station; but
he had her immediately released and afterwards he employed all his influence

to stop the prosecution.
The second conviction of Pyrot was Greatauk's last victory.

Justice Chaussepied, who had formerly liked soldiers so much, and esteemed
their justice so highly,, being now enraged with the military judges, quashed

their judgments as a monkey cracks nuts. He rehabilitated Pyrot a second time;
he would, if necessary, have rehabilitated him five hundred times.

Furious at having been cowards and at having allowed themselves to be deceived
and made game of, the Republicans turned against the monks and clergy. The

deputies passed laws of expulsion, separation, and spoliation against them.
What Father Cornemuse had foreseen took place. That good monk was driven from

the Wood of Conils. Treasury officers confiscated his retorts and his stills,
and the liquidators divided amongst them his bottles of St. Oberosian liqueur.

The pious distiller lost the annualincome of three million five hundred
thousand francs that his products procured for him. Father Agaric went into

exile, abandoning his school into the hands of laymen, who soon allowed it to
fall into decay. Separated from its foster-mother, the State, the Church of

Penguinia withered like a plucked flower.
The victoriousdefenders of the innocent man now abused each other and

overwhelmed each other reciprocally with insults and calumnies. The vehement
Kerdanic hurled himself upon Phoenix as if ready to devour him. The wealthy

Jews and the seven hundred Pyrotists turned away with disdain from the
socialist comrades whose aid they had humbly implored in the past.

"We know you no longer," said they. "To the devil with you and your social
justice. Social justice is the defence of property."

Having been elected a Deputy and chosen to be the leader of the new majority,
comrade Larrivee was appointed by the Chamber and public opinion to the

Premiership. He showed himself an energeticdefender of the military tribunals
that had condemned Pyrot. When his former socialist comrades claimed a little

more justice and liberty for the employes of the State as well as for manual
workers, he opposed their proposals in an eloquent speech.

"Liberty," said he, "is not licence. Between order and disorder my choice is
made: revolution is impotence. Progress has no more formidable enemy than

violence. Gentlemen, those who, as I am, are anxious for reform, ought to
apply themselves before everything else to cure this agitation which enfeebles

government just as fever exhausts those who are ill. It is time to reassure
honest people."

This speech was received with applause. The government of the Republic
remained in subjection to the great financial companies, the army was

exclusively devoted to the defence of capital, while the fleet was designed
solely to procure fresh orders for the mine-owners. Since the rich refused to

pay their just share of the taxes, the poor, as in the past, paid for them.
In the mean time from the height of his old steamline, beneath the crowded

stars of night, Bidault-Coquille gazed sadly at the sleeping city. Maniflore
had left him. Consumed with a desire for fresh devotions and fresh sacrifices,

she had gone in company with a young Bulgarian to bear justice and vengeance
to Sofia. He did not regret her, having perceived after the Affair, that she

was less beautiful in form and in thought than he had at first imagined. His
impressions had been modified in the same direction concerning many other

forms and many other thoughts. And what was cruelest of all to him, he
regarded himself as not so great, not so splendid, as he had believed.

And he reflected:
"You considered yourself sublime when you had but candour and good-will. Of

what were you proud, Bidault-Coquille? Of having been one of the first to know
that Pyrot was innocent and Greatauk a scoundrel. But three-fourths of those

who defended Greatauk against the attacks of the seven hundred Pyrotists knew
that better than you. Of what then did you show yourself so proud? Of having

dared to say what you thought? That is civic courage, and, like military
courage, it is a mere result of imprudence. You have been imprudent. So far so

good, but that is no reason for praising yourself beyond measure. Your
imprudence was trifling; it exposed you to trifling perils; you did not risk

your head by it. The Penguins have lost that cruel and sanguinary pride which
formerly gave a tragicgrandeur to their revolutions; it is the fatal result

of the weakening of beliefs and character. Ought one to look upon oneself as a
superior spirit for having shown a little more clear-sightedness than the

vulgar? I am very much afraid, on the contrary, Bidault-Coquille, that you
have given proof of a gross misunderstanding of the conditions of the moral

and intellectual development of a people. You imagined that social injustices
were threaded together like pearls and that it would be enough to pull off one

in order to unfasten the whole necklace. That is a very ingenuous conception.
You flattered yourself that at one stroke you were establishing justice in

your own country and in the universe. You were a brave man, an honest
idealist, though without much experimentalphilosophy. But go home to your own

heart and you will recognise that you had in you a spice of malice and that
our ingenuousness was not without cunning. You believed you were performing a

fine moral action. You said to yourself: 'Here am I, just and courageous once
for all. I can henceforthrepose in the public esteem and the praise of

historians.' And now that you have lost your illusions, now that you know how
hard it is to redress wrongs, and that the task must ever be begun afresh, you

are going back to your asteroids. You are right; but go back to them with
modesty, Bidault-Coquille!"

BOOK VII. MODERN TIMES
MADAME CERES

"Only extreme things are tolerable." Count Robert de Montesquiou.
I. MADAME CLARENCE'S DRAWING-ROOM

Madame Clarence, the widow of an exalted functionary of the Republic, loved to
entertain. Every Thursday she collected together some friends of modest

condition who took pleasure in conversation. The ladies who went to see her,
very different in age and rank, were all without money, and had all suffered

much. There was a duchess who looked like a fortune-teller and a
fortune-teller who looked like a duchess. Madame Clarence was pretty enough to

maintain some old liaisons, but not to form new ones, and she generally
inspired a quiet esteem. She had a very pretty daughter, who, since she had no

dower, caused some alarm among the male guests; for the Penguins were as much
afraid of portionless girls as they were of the devil himself. Eveline

Clarence, noticing their reserve and perceiving its cause, used to hand them
their tea with an air of disdain. Moreover, she seldom appeared at the parties

and talked only to the ladies or the very young people. Her discreet and
retiring presence put no restraint upon the conversation, since those who took

part in it thought either that as she was a young girl she would not
understand it, or that, being twenty-five years old, she might listen to

everything.
One Thursday therefore, in Madame Clarence's drawing-room, the conversation

turned upon love. The ladies spoke of it with pride, delicacy, and mystery,
the men with discretion and fatuity; everyone took an interest in the

conversation, for each one was interested in what he or she said. A great deal
of wit flowed; brilliant apostrophes were launched forth and keen repartees

were returned. But when Professor Haddi began to speak he overwhelmed