Still,
he was not surprised; some secret link must have brought that vision
there. Ah! how fond they had been of one another long ago, and what a
good brother that elder brother, so upright and gentle, had been!
Henceforth, also, the rupture was complete; Pierre no longer saw
Guillaume, since the latter had cloistered himself in his chemical
studies, living like a savage in a little suburban house, with a mistress
and two big dogs. Then Pierre's reverie again diverged, and he thought of
that trial in which Guillaume had been mentioned, like one suspected of
having compromising friendships amongst the most violent revolutionaries.
It was related, too, that the young man had, after long researches,
discovered the formula of a terrible explosive, one pound of which would
suffice to blow up a cathedral. And Pierre then thought of those
Anarchists who wished to renew and save the world by destroying it. They
were but dreamers, horrible dreamers; yet dreamers in the same way as
those innocent pilgrims whom he had seen kneeling at the Grotto in an
enraptured flock. If the Anarchists, if the extreme Socialists, demanded
with violence the equality of wealth, the sharing of all the enjoyments
of the world, the pilgrims on their side demanded with tears equality of
health and an equitable sharing of moral and physical peace. The latter
relied on miracles, the former appealed to brute force. At bottom,
however, it was but the same exasperated dream of fraternity and justice,
the eternal desire for happiness--neither poor nor sick left, but bliss
for one and all.
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