And there the dark multitude fidgets about.  By footpaths and streets they have come from the country and the town.  I see, gazing earnestly, stiff-set with attention, faces scorched by rude contact with the seasons or blanched by bad atmospheres; the sharp and mummified face of the peasant; faces of young men grown bitter before they have come of age; of women grown ugly before they have come of age, who draw the little wings of their capes over their faded blouses and faded throats; the clerks of anemic and timorous career; and the little people with whom times are so difficult, whom their mediocrity depresses; all that stirring of backs and shoulders and hanging arms, in poverty dressed up or naked.  Behold their numbers and immense strength.  Behold, therefore, authority and justice.  For justice and authority are not hollow formulas—­they are life, the most of life there can be; they are mankind, they are mankind in all places and all times.  These words, justice and authority, do not echo in an abstract sphere.  They are rooted in the human being.  They overflow and palpitate.  When I demand justice, I am not groping in a dream, I am crying from the depths of all unhappy hearts.

Such are they, that mountain of people heaped on the ground like metal for the roads, overwhelmed by unhappiness, debased by charity and asking for it, bound to the rich by urgent necessity, entangled in the wheels of a single machine, the machine of frightful repetition.  And in that multitude I also place nearly all young people, whoever they are, because of their docility and their general ignorance.  These lowly people form an imposing mass as far as one may see, yet each of them is hardly anything, because he is isolated.  It is almost a mistake to count them; what you see when you look at the multitude is an immensity made of nothing.

And the people of to-day—­overloaded with gloom and intoxicated with prejudice—­see blood, because of the red hangings of rostrums; they are fascinated by the sparkle of diamonds, of necklaces, of decorations, of the eyeglasses of the intellectuals.  They have eyes but they see not, ears but they hear not; arms which they do not use; and they are thoughtless because they let others do their thinking!  And the other half of this same multitude is yonder, looking for Man and looked for by Man, in the big black furrows where blood is scattered and the human race is disappearing.  And still farther away, in another part of the world, the same throne-like platforms are crushing into the same immense areas of men; and the same gilded servants of royalty are scattering broadcast words which are only a translation of those which fell on us here.

Some women in mourning are hardly stains on this gloomy unity.  They wander and turn round in the open spaces, and are the same as they were in ancient times.  They are not of any age or any century, these murdered souls, covered with black veils; they are you and I.