civil war; they had possession of him; tragic but fortunate catastrophe; after so much massacre and carnage, he was there, the man who had killed others, and whose turn it was to die.
And if he should find some one to save him!
Cimourdain, that is to say '93, held Lantenac, that is to say the monarchy, and if he should find some one to snatch its prey from this claw of bronze! Lantenac, the man in whom concentrated that sheaf of scourges called the past, the Marquis de Lantenac was in the tomb, the heavy, eternal door was closed on him, and if some one should come from outside to slide the bolt! this social malefactor was dead, and with him the revolt, the fratricidal contest, the beastly war, and if some one should bring him back to life!
Oh! how this death's head would laugh!
How this spectre would say, "Very good, here I am alive; idiots!"
How be would set himself to his hideous work again! How Lantenac would plunge again, implacable and full of delight, into the gulf of hatred and of war! The very next day how the people would again see houses burning, prisoners massacred, the wounded finished, women shot!
And, after all, did not Gauvain exaggerate this deed which fascinated him so?
Three children were lost; Lantenac had saved them.
But who was the cause of their being lost?
Was it not Lantenac?
Who had put those cradles into the fire?
Was it not l'Imânus?
Who was l'Imânus?
The lieutenant of the marquis.
The general is the one responsible.
So the incendiary and the assassin was Lantenac.
What had he done that was so admirable?
He had not carried out his purpose—nothing more.
After having planned the crime he had retreated from it. It had seemed to him too horrible. The mother's cry had awakened in him those inmost depths of human pity, a sort of storehouse of universal life, which exists in all souls, even the most hardened. At this cry he had retraced his steps. From the night into which he had plunged, he had gone back towards the daylight. After having done the
