her army of innumerable fighters, throwing through the centuries millions after millions of poor and hungry and rebellious beings into the fight for truth and justice.  Not a single forward step in history has ever been taken without numerousness having urged humanity forward.  To-morrow, like yesterday, will be won by the swarming of the multitude whose quest is happiness.  And to-morrow will give the benefits which our age has awaited; economic equality obtained even as political equality has been obtained; a just apportionment of wealth rendered easy; and compulsory work re-established as the one glorious and essential need.

It is not true that labor has been imposed on mankind as punishment for sin, it is on the contrary an honor, a mark of nobility, the most precious of boons, the joy, the health, the strength, the very soul of the world, which itself labors incessantly, ever creating the future.  And misery, the great, abominable social crime, will disappear amid the glorification of labor, the distribution of the universal task among one and all, each accepting his legitimate share of duties and rights.  And may children come, they will simply be instruments of wealth, they will but increase the human capital, the free happiness of a life in which the children of some will no longer be beasts of burden, or food for slaughter or for vice, to serve the egotism of the children of others.  And life will then again prove the conqueror; there will come the renascence of life, honored and worshipped, the religion of life so long crushed beneath the hateful nightmare of Roman Catholicism, from which on divers occasions the nations have sought to free themselves by violence, and which they will drive away at last on the now near day when cult and power, and sovereign beauty shall be vested in the fruitful earth and the fruitful spouse.

In that last resplendent hour of eventide, Mathieu and Marianne reigned by virtue of their numerous race.  They ended as heroes of life, because of the great creative work which they had accomplished amid battle and toil and grief.  Often had they sobbed, but with extreme old age had come peace, deep smiling peace, made up of the good labor performed and the certainty of approaching rest while their children and their children’s children resumed the fight, labored and suffered, lived in their own turn.  And a part of Mathieu and Marianne’s heroic grandeur sprang from the divine desire with which they had glowed, the desire which moulds and regulates the world.  They were like a sacred temple in which the god had fixed his abode, they were animated by the inextinguishable fire with which the universe ever burns for the work of continual creation.  Their radiant beauty under their white hair came from the light which yet filled their eyes, the light of love’s power, which age had been unable to extinguish.  Doubtless, as they themselves jestingly remarked at times, they had been prodigals, their family had been