Gabriel was not listening to them; surprise had made him fall into a reverie of self-examination.  He thought—­terrified of the great error he had committed—­he saw an immense gulf opening between himself and those he had believed to be his disciples.  He remembered his brother’s words.  Ah, the good sense of the simpleminded!  He, with all his reading, had never foreseen the danger of teaching these ignorant people in a few months what required a whole life of thought and study.  What happened to people stirred up by revolution was happening here on a small scale.  The most noble thoughts become corrupted passing through the sieve of vulgarity; the most generous aspirations are poisoned by the dregs of poverty.

He had sown the revolutionary seed in these outcasts of the Church, drowsing in the atmosphere of two centuries ago.  He had thought to help on the revolution of the future by forming men, but on awaking from his dreams he found only common criminals.  What a terrible mistake!  His ideas had only tended to destruction.  In removing from the dulled brains the prejudices of ignorance, and the superstitions of the slave, he had only succeeded in making them daring for evil.  Selfishness was the only passion vibrating in them.  They had only learnt that they were wretched and ought not to be so.  The fate of their companions in misfortune, of the greater part of humanity, wretched and sad, had no interest for them.  If they could get out of their present state, bettering themselves in whatever way they could, they cared very little if the world went on just as it did before; that tears, and pain and hunger should reign below, in order to ensure the comfort of those above.  He had sown his thoughts in them hoping to accelerate the harvest, but like all those forced and artificial cultivations, that grow with astonishing rapidity only to give rotten fruit, the result of his propaganda was moral corruption.  Men in the end, like all of them!  The human wild beast, seeking his own welfare at the cost of his fellow, perpetuating the disorders of pain for the majority, as long as he can enjoy plenty during the few years of his life.  Ah!  Where could he meet with that superior being, ennobled by the worship of reason, doing good without hope of reward, sacrificing everything for human solidarity, that man-God who would glorify the future!

“Come along, Gabriel,” continued the bell-ringer.  “Do not let us lose time it is only a few minutes’ work; and then—­flight!”

“No,” said Luna firmly, coming out of his reverie, “you shall not do this; you ought not to do it.  It is a robbery you suggest to me, and my pain is great, seeing that you reckoned on me; others rob from fatal instinct or from corruption of soul, you have come to it because I tried to enlighten you, because I tried to open your minds to the truth.  Oh! it is horrible, most horrible!”

“What is the use of all these objections, Gabriel?  Is it not a bit of wood?  Whom do we harm by taking its jewels?  Do not the rich rob, and everyone who possesses anything?  Why should we not imitate them?”