THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT 183 



worse. It did not occur to him that he was lying when 

 he spread those inventions abroad ; he merely obeyed a con- 

 fused command of the morality he saw about him. He 

 yielded unconsciously, against his will, as it were, to the 

 all-powerful desire of the general malevolence. . . . But 

 why complete a picture with which all are familiar who 

 have spent some years in the country ? Here we have the 

 second semblance, that some will call the real truth. It is 

 the truth of practical life. It undoubtedly is based on the 

 most precise, the only facts that one can observe and test. 



95 



" Let us sit on these sheaves," he continued, " and look 

 again. Let us reject not a single one of the little facts that 

 build up the reality of which I have spoken. Let us permit 

 them to depart of their own accord into space. They cumber 

 the foreground, and yet we cannot but be aware of the exist- 

 ence, behind them, of a great and very curious force that 

 sustains the whole. Does it only sustain and not raise ? These 

 men whom we see before us at least are no longer the fero- 

 cious animals of whom La Bruyere speaks, the wretches 

 who ' talked in a kind of inarticulate voice, and withdrew at 

 night to their dens, where they lived on black bread, water, 

 and roots.' 



" The race, you will tell me, is neither as strong nor as 

 healthy. That may be. Alcohol and the other scourge are 

 accidents that humanity has to surmount ; ordeals, it may be, 

 by which certain of our organs, those of the nerves, for instance, 

 may benefit ; for we invariably find that life profits by the ills 



