"Monsieur Cardonnet," said he, "if, when you told me that you felt a sort of sympathy for me despite the ennui that I cause you, you did not say it simply to be polite, or by way of jest, this is the reason: we profess the same principles, we are both communists." "Can it be true?" cried Emile, astounded by this declaration and thinking that he must be dreaming. "I thought just now that you answered me as you did simply to be courteous or by way of jest; but am I really so fortunate as to find in you a justification of my desires and my dreams?" "What is there surprising in that?" rejoined the marquis calmly. "May not the truth make itself known in solitude as well as in a crowd, and have I not lived long enough to be able to distinguish good from evil, the true from the false? You take me for a very matter-of-fact, very cold man. It is possible that I am; at my age a man is too tired of himself to care to examine himself; but, outside of our individuality, there are general realities sufficiently worthy of interest to divert our thoughts from our ennui. "For a long time I retained the opinions and prejudices in which I was reared; my natural indolence was content not to scrutinize them too closely, and then I had internal anxieties which kept me from thinking about them. But since old age has set me free from all pretension to happiness and from every sort of regret or special interest in anything, I have felt the need of obtaining an insight into the general life of my fellow-men, and, consequently, into the meaning of the divine laws as applied to mankind. "Certain Saint-Simonian pamphlets fell into my hands by chance, I read them to pass the time, having as yet no idea that they could go beyond the bold theories of Jean-Jacques and Voltaire, with whom careful study had reconciled me. "I determined to know more of the principles of this new school, and I passed from that to the study of Fourier. I admitted everything, although I did not very clearly distinguish their contradictions, and it still saddened me to see the ancient world crumble under the weight of theories invincible in their system of criticism, confused and incomplete in their principles of organization. It was not until five or six years ago that I accepted with perfect disinterestedness and great mental satisfaction the principle of a social revolution. "The attempts at communism had seemed to me monstrous at first, on the faith of those who combated them. I read the newspapers and publications of all the schools, and I gradually lost myself in that labyrinth, without being repelled by fatigue. Little by little the communist hypothesis came forth from its clouds; able expositions shed light into my mind. I felt that I must go back to the teaching of history and to the tradition of the human race.