The fourth in the group, Claude Puget, sat by at these jousts of words with a cold and somewhat disdainful attention. Coming from the very undermost _bourgeoisie_, poor, uprooted from his province by a passing inspector of schools who remarked his intelligence, prematurely deprived of the intimate influence of his family, this winner of a _Lycee_ scholarship, accustomed to depend upon himself alone, to live only with himself, merely lived by himself and for himself. An egotistic philosopher given to analysis of the soul, voluptuously immersed in his introspection like a big cat curled up in a ball, he was not moved at all by the agitation of the others. These three friends of his who never could agree among themselves he put in the same bag--with the "populars." Did not all three forfeit their social rank by wishing to partake in the aspirations of the mob? Truth to say, the mob was a different crowd for each of them. But for Puget the crowd, whatever it might be, was always wrong. The crowd was the enemy. The intellect should remain alone and follow its particular laws and found, apart from the vulgar crowd and the State, the small and closed kingdom of thought. And Pierre, seated near the window, distractedly looked out of doors, and dreamed. Generally speaking, he mingled in these juvenile assaults with passion. But today it seemed to him a humming of idle words which he listened to from so far away, oh, so far away! in a bored and mocking demi-torpidity. Plunged in their discussions, the others were a long while in remarking his muteness. But at last Saisset, accustomed to find in Pierre an echo of his verbal bolshevisms, was astonished at failing to hear it reverberate any more and put the question to him. Pierre waked up in a hurry, reddened, smiled and asked: "What were you talking about?" They were most indignant. "Why, you haven't been listening to anything!" "What, then, were you brooding about?" asked Naude. A little confused, a little impertinent, Pierre replied: "About the springtide. It has come back all right without your permission. It will clear out without our help." All of them crushed him with their disdain. Naude taunted him as a "poet." And Jacques See as a _poseur_. Puget alone fixed his eyes on him with curiosity and irony in them, his wrinkled eyes with their cold pupils. "Flying ant!" "What?" questioned Pierre, rather amused. "Beware of the wings!" said Puget. "It's the nuptial flight. It only lasts one hour." "Life does not last much more," said Pierre. * * * * *