Again she took the words from his mouth, exclaiming hotly: 

“Hush! be silent!—­you have atoned for all.”

He reflected a moment.  “Yes, perhaps I shall have atoned, when I am dead.  Ah, Jean, old fellow, you didn’t know what a service you were rendering us all when you gave me that bayonet thrust.”

But the other protested, his eyes swimming with tears: 

“Don’t, I entreat you, say such things! do you wish to make me go and dash out my brains against a wall?”

Maurice pursued his train of thought, speaking in hurried, eager tones.

“Remember what you said to me the day after Sedan, that it was not such a bad thing, now and then, to receive a good drubbing.  And you added that if a man had gangrene in his system, if he saw one of his limbs wasting from mortification, it would be better to take an ax and chop off that limb than to die from the contamination of the poison.  I have many a time thought of those words since I have been here, without a friend, immured in this city of distress and madness.  And I am the diseased limb, and it is you who have lopped it off—­” He went on with increasing vehemence, regardless of the supplications of his terrified auditors, in a fervid tirade that abounded with symbols and striking images.  It was the untainted, the reasoning, the substantial portion of France, the peasantry, the tillers of the soil, those who had always kept close contact with their mother Earth, that was suppressing the outbreak of the crazed, exasperated part, the part that had been vitiated by the Empire and led astray by vain illusions and empty dreams; and in the performance of its duty it had had to cut deep into the living flesh, without being fully aware of what it was doing.  But the baptism of blood, French blood, was necessary; the abominable holocaust, the living sacrifice, in the midst of the purifying flames.  Now they had mounted the steps of the Calvary and known their bitterest agony; the crucified nation had expiated its faults and would be born again.  “Jean, old friend, you and those like you are strong in your simplicity and honesty.  Go, take up the spade and the trowel, turn the sod in the abandoned field, rebuild the house!  As for me, you did well to lop me off, since I was the ulcer that was eating away your strength!”

After that his language became more and more incoherent; he insisted on rising and going to sit by the window.  “Paris burns, Paris burns; not a stone of it will be left standing.  Ah! the fire that I invoked, it destroys, but it heals; yes, the work it does is good.  Let me go down there; let me help to finish the work of humanity and liberty—­”

Jean had the utmost difficulty in getting him back to bed, while Henriette tearfully recalled memories of their childhood, and entreated him, for the sake of the love they bore each other, to be calm.  Over the immensity of Paris the fiery glow deepened and widened; the sea of flame seemed to be invading the remotest quarters of the horizon; the heavens were like the vaults of a colossal oven, heated to red heat.  And athwart the red light of the conflagrations the dense black smoke-clouds from the Ministry of Finance, which had been burning three days and given forth no blaze, continued to pour in unbroken, slow procession.