They have opened the red barrier. Applause and congratulations cross each other. Some notabilities come down from the rostrum, they look at me, they are obviously interested in the wounded soldier that I am, they advance towards me. Among them is the intellectual person who spoke first. He is wagging the white head and its cauliflower curls, and looking all ways with eyes as empty as those of a king of cards. They told me his name, but I have forgotten it with contempt. I slip away from them. I am bitterly remorseful that for so long a portion of my life I believed what Bonéas said. I accuse myself of having formerly put my trust in speakers and writers who--however learned, distinguished, famous--were only imbeciles or villains. I fly from these people, since I am not strong enough to answer and resist them--or to cry out upon them that the only memory it is important to preserve of the years we have endured is that of their loathsome horror and lunacy. * * * * * * But the few words fallen from on high have sufficed to open my eyes, to show me that the Separation I dimly saw in the tempest of my nights in hospital was true. It comes down from vacancy and the clouds, it takes form and it takes root--it is there, it is there; and the indictment comes to light, as precise and as tragic as that row of faces! Kings? There they are. There are many different kinds of king, just as there are different gods. But there is one royalty everywhere, and that is the very form of ancient society, the great machine which is stronger than men. And all the personages enthroned on that rostrum--those business men and bishops, those politicians and great merchants, those bulky office-holders or journalists, those old generals in sumptuous decorations, those writers in uniform--they are the custodians of the highest law and its executors. It is those people whose interests are common and are contrary to those of mankind; and their interests are--above all and imperiously--let nothing change! It is those people who keep their eternal subjects in eternal order, who deceive and dazzle them, who take their brains away as they take their bodies, who flatter their servile instincts, who make shallow, resplendent creeds for them, and explain huge happenings away with all the pretexts they like. It is because of them that the law of things does not rest on justice and the moral law. If some of them are unconscious of it, no matter. Neither does it matter that all of them do not always profit by the public's servitude, nor that some of them, sometimes, even happen to suffer from it. They are none the less, all of them, by their solid coalition, material and moral, the defenders of lies above and delusion below. These are the people who reign in the place of kings, or at the same time, here as everywhere.