Born at the unfortunate period of their father's life, when M. Raindal had been put out of the University for being an accomplice of Barbès and was reduced to coaching at two francs a lesson, it seemed as if the son had inherited a taste for political opposition. He had detested in turn each government which his functions compelled him to serve, the second empire, M. Thiers, the Seize-Mai, and the subsequent rule of "opportunism." Finally, in 1889, when the trunks of General Boulanger were seized, a card bearing Cyprien's name was found therein upon which he had written the cordial exhortation, "Bravo, general! Forward! The whole country stands with you!" Cyprien Raindal was on the eve of being promoted; but called to the office of the Minister, his lips already shaping words of gratitude, he received instead the notification of his dismissal. The blow struck him as he was breathing the very spirit of peace; it was like an unexpected insult, like a blow upon the cheek that had been offered for a kiss. Murmuring threats and words of rage, he had returned to his desk, and then had rushed out to order new visiting-cards, on which appeared under his name, _ancien sous-chef de bureau au Ministère de l'Industrie_, and one of these he had himself nailed up on the door of his apartment. But his vengeance had stopped there. The official mind within him forbade his persisting in what was almost the usurpation of a title, and he finally decided to burn the rest of the deceptive cards. Moreover, in spite of the affair, his brother was endeavoring to secure him the benefit of his pension,--three thousand francs, without which he would have been plunged into the most undignified misery. He waited, holding himself in check for a few weeks, and only began to express himself with freedom when his pension had been officially liquidated. When that was done, however, the fury of his opinions and the violence of his language burst forth terribly, like explosives that have been too long compressed. Thirty years of exasperation, hitherto repressed by the necessity of existing and the fear of his superiors, rushed out through his lips in avalanches that seemed to be inexhaustible. He wished at first to reduce his hatred to a formula, to justify his discontent with some sort of principles, and he inclined towards socialism. Unfortunately, however, he was lost in questions of capital and wages; statistics bored him and political economy upset him with its systems, which were always either unstable or denied by rival experts. By taste, if not by conviction, he was bourgeois; by education he was, like his brother, non-religious; by force of habit he was a waster of red-tape. What he needed was a more human and less subversive doctrine, theories easy to master, morality rather than figures, and sentiment rather than deduction.