"Not bad!" exclaimed the merchant smiling. "Here we have our dear George about to start all over anew with his astonishment. And why, pray, should not I also belong to your secret society? Perchance, because, without being rich, exactly, I enjoy some comfort and have a few duds to sell? What business have I, I suppose you are thinking, with a party, the aim of which is the conquest for the proletariat of political life, through universal suffrage, and of property through the organization of labor? Why, my good George, just because I _have_, it is my duty to assist my brothers to conquer what they _have not_." "These are generous sentiments, monsieur!" exclaimed George. "Rare, indeed, are the men who, having arrived at comfort, turn around to give a helping hand to their less fortunate brothers." "No, George; no. That is not so rare. When, perhaps within not many hours, you will see running to arms all the members of our society, one of the chiefs of which I have been for some time, you will find among them merchants, artists, manufacturers, literary people, lawyers, men of learning, physicians, in short--_bourgeois_, most of whom, like myself, live in modest comfort, all of them animated with no higher ambition than the emancipation of their brothers, the common people, and anxious to drop their guns, after the struggle, in order to return to their industrial and peaceful occupations." "Oh, monsieur, how surprised and happy I am at what you tell me!" "Still surprised! Poor George! And why so? Because there are _bourgeois_--or, to use the full, big term, _republican Socialist bourgeois_? Come, now, George, speaking seriously, is not the cause of the bourgeois that of the proletariat? Is there any doubt but that I, for instance, yesterday a proletarian, whom good luck has so far favored, might, through some stroke of bad luck, become again a proletarian to-morrow; and, if not I, my son? Am not I--and my case is that of all other small traders--at the mercy of the barons of high finance, of the strong iron safes, just as our forefathers were at the mercy of the barons of the strong forts? Are not the small holders as much enslaved and plundered by the Dukes of Mortgage, by the Marquises of Usury, by the Counts of Speculation? Are we, the merchants, not daily, despite all our probity, despite all our labors, despite all our economy, despite all our intelligence--are not we, despite all that, ever on the brink of ruin through any crisis that may hap to come upon us, whenever, either through the fear, the cupidity or the whim of the satraps, it pleases those autocrats of capital to stop credit and to reject our signature, however honorable the same may be? Would we, were credit, instead of being the monopoly of the few that it is to-day, democratically organized by the state, as it ought to be,--would we be then exposed to ruin by the sudden withdrawal of capital, by usurious extortion, of discount, or as the consequence of a merciless