It is hard to pass judgment on lives such as these. One stands bewildered and aghast before men capable of such deeds; and, if they defy frivolous judgment, even to explain them seems beyond the power of one who, in the presence of the same wrongs that so deeply moved them, can still remain inert. Yet is there any escape to the conclusion that all this was utter waste of life and devotion? Far from awakening in their opponents the slightest thought of social wrong, these men, at the expense of their lives, awakened only a spirit of revenge. "An eye for an eye" was now the sentiment of the militants on both sides. All reason and sympathy disappeared, and, instead, every brutal passion had play. Politically and socially, the reactionaries were put in the saddle. Every progressive in France was placed on the defensive. Anyone who hinted of social wrong was ostracized. Caesarism ruled France, and, through _les lois scelerates_, every bush was beaten, every hiding-place uncovered, until every anarchist was driven out. The acts of Vaillant and Henry, like the acts of the Chicago anarchists, not only failed utterly as propaganda, they even closed the ear and the heart of the world to everything and anything that was associated, or that could in any manner be connected, with anarchism. They served only one purpose--every malign influence and reactionary element took the acts of these misguided prodigies as a pretext to fasten upon the people still more firmly both social and political injustice. To no one were they so useful as to their enemy.