foot on an ant-hill, he gives no heed to all the lives which he stamps
out."

Pierre, whom this theory rendered quite indignant, raised a cry of
protest: "Oh! brother, brother, is it you who are saying such things?"

Yet, Guillaume did not pause: "If I have ended by choosing this basilica
of the Sacred Heart," he continued, "it is because I found it near at
hand and easy to destroy. But it is also because it haunts and
exasperates me, because I have long since condemned it. . . . As I have
often said to you, one cannot imagine anything more preposterous than
Paris, our great Paris, crowned and dominated by this temple raised to
the glorification of the absurd. Is it not outrageous that common sense
should receive such a smack after so many centuries of science, that Rome
should claim the right of triumphing in this insolent fashion, on our
loftiest height in the full sunlight? The priests want Paris to repent
and do penitence for its liberative work of truth and justice. But its
only right course is to sweep away all that hampers and insults it in its
march towards deliverance. And so may the temple fall with its deity of
falsehood and servitude! And may its ruins crush its worshippers, so that
like one of the old geological revolutions of the world, the catastrophe
may resound through the very entrails of mankind, and renew and change
it!"

"Brother, brother!" again cried Pierre, quite beside himself, "is it you
who are talking? What! you, a great scientist, a man of great heart, you
have come to this! What madness is stirring you that you should think and
say such abominable things? On the evening when we confessed our secrets
one to the other, you told me of your proud and lofty dream of ideal
Anarchy. There would be free harmony in life, which left to its natural