And
Pierre, who had hitherto listened to them all without a word, without a
gesture, who had hidden his secrets from his brother, seeking refuge in
his supposed priestly views, suddenly felt such bitterness stirring his
heart that he could lie no longer.
"Ah! brother, if you have your dream, I have my sore which has eaten into
me and left me void! Your Anarchy, your dream of just happiness, for
which Salvat works with bombs, why, it is the final burst of insanity
which will sweep everything away! How is it that you can't realise it?
The century is ending in ruins. I've been listening to you all for a
month past. Fourier destroyed Saint-Simon, Proudhon and Comte demolished
Fourier, each in turn piling up incoherences and contradictions, leaving
mere chaos behind them, which nobody dares to sort out. And since then,
Socialist sects have been swarming and multiplying, the more sensible of
them leading simply to dictatorship, while the others indulge in most
dangerous reveries. And after such a tempest of ideas there could indeed
come nothing but your Anarchy, which undertakes to bring the old world to
a finish by reducing it to dust. . . . Ah! I expected it, I was waiting
for it--that final catastrophe, that fratricidal madness, the inevitable
class warfare in which our civilisation was destined to collapse!
Everything announced it: the want and misery below, the egotism up above,
all the cracking of the old human habitation, borne down by too great a
weight of crime and grief.
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