life, whether it were for slaughter or for toil.

And as Mathieu thought of it all a sudden weakness came upon him. Again
he asked himself whether the Beauchenes, the Moranges, the Seguins, and
all those thousands and thousands around him were not right, and whether
he were not the fool, the dupe, the criminal, with his belief in life
ever renascent, ever growing and spreading throughout the world. And
before him arose, too, the image of Seraphine, the temptress, opening her
perfumed arms to him and carrying him off to the same existence of
pleasure and baseness which the others led.

Then he remembered the three hundred francs which he carried in his
pocket. Three hundred francs, which must last for a whole month, though
out of them he had to pay various little sums that he already owed. The
remainder would barely suffice to buy a ribbon for Marianne and jam for
the youngsters' bread. And if he set the Moranges on one side, the
others, the Beauchenes and the Seguins, were rich. He bitterly recalled
their wealth. He pictured the rumbling factory with its black buildings
covering a great stretch of ground; he pictured hundreds of workmen ever
increasing the fortune of their master, who dwelt in a handsomely
appointed pavilion and whose only son was growing up for future
sovereignty, under his mother's vigilant eyes. He pictured, too, the
Seguins' luxurious mansion in the Avenue d'Antin, the great hall, the
magnificent staircase, the vast room above, crowded with marvels; he
pictured all the refinement, all the train of wealth, all the tokens of
lavish life, the big dowry which would be given to the little girl, the
high position which would be purchased for the son. And he, bare and
empty-handed, who now possessed nothing, not even a stone at the edge of
a field, would doubtless always possess nothing, neither factory buzzing
with workmen, nor mansion rearing its proud front aloft. And he was the