Thus, gradually and by himself, he had built up a social creed which allowed him elbow room, as would a suit of clothes made to order. Firmly persuaded that he was the victim of injustice, he longed to see justice enthroned. The punishment of evildoers, the death or exile of the thieves, a general return to honest life and the crushing of iniquity--these he wished to see in the first place. Later? Well, one would see about the rest. Let the people obtain that much purification, and they would settle the remainder in the best way possible. M. Raindal, junior, was not one of those swaggering dreamers who promise to destroy and rebuild society as if it were the hut of a road-mender. He knew how powerful was tradition, how necessary the family, and he appreciated the indispensable charm of freedom. Before doing away with that, let Frenchmen think about clearing the country from the vermin that infested it. If the chance offered itself, Uncle Cyprien would not refuse his help. He declared himself ready to go with them any day that the "comrades" would proceed en masse to seize in their own mansions the prevaricators, the Jews, and the pillars of the church whose coalition kept down France as with a three-pronged fork. It was his own comparison, and he repeated it readily with much bragging about getting his head broken and breaking the heads of many others. His reading of the newspapers of the opposition had thoroughly fitted him for a place in the ranks of those sincere justice-lovers whom the death of the rebel general had left without a head but not without a hope. Instinctively he turned towards the pamphleteers who denounced the enemies of the weak or supported the victims against their oppressors. By a curious anomaly he had in turn discovered within himself all the hatreds, no matter how incongruous, with which these masters stirred up the flames. Rochefort had helped him to find in his heart the hatred of all politicians; with Paul Bert or his disciples he had discerned in himself a hatred for the priests and all devout Catholics; with Drumont, hatred for Jews and exotics. He was always reading the articles and the books of these pamphleteers and could quote whole passages from memory. His conversation showed this; it was discordant with the most diverse insults. The words _chequard_ (grafter), _repu_ (bloated), _panamist_ (one compromised in the Panama scandals), _calotin_ (priest-ridden), _cafard_ (canting rascal), _ratichon_ (bigot), joined to those of _youtre_ (Jew), _youpin_ (Jew), or _rasta_ (short for _rastaquouère_ and meaning an exotic mongrel or Levantine) vibrated all at once like the "sustained bass" of his indignations. His virulence when he discussed sociology in the presence of strangers was a cause of deep grievance to his family.