Ah! if we were all pure and lofty enough to do without Woman, and renounce all those horrid sexual questions, so that the last of the species might die childless, eh?
The world would then at least finish in a clean and proper manner!" Thereupon, Hyacinthe walked off with his languid air, well pleased with the effect which he had produced on the others.
"So you know him ?" said Pierre to Francois.
"He was my school-fellow at Condorcet, we were in the same classes together.

Such a funny fellow he was! A perfect dunce! And he was always making a parade of Father Duvillard's millions, while pretending to disdain them, and act the revolutionist, for ever saying that he'd use his cigarette to fire the cartridge which was to blow up the world! He was Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, and Tolstoi, and Ibsen, rolled into one! And you can see what he has become with it all: a humbug with a diseased mind!" "It's a terrible symptom," muttered Pierre, "when through _ennui_ or lassitude, or the contagion of destructive fury, the sons of the happy and privileged ones start doing the work of the demolishers." Francois had resumed his walk, going down towards the ornamental water, where some children were sailing their boats.

"That fellow is simply grotesque," he replied; "but how would you have sane people give any heed to that mysticism, that awakening of spirituality which is alleged by the same _doctrinaires_ who started the bankruptcy of science cry, when after so brief an evolution it produces such insanity, both in art and literature?
A few years of influence have sufficed; and now Satanism, Occultism and other absurdities are flourishing; not to mention that, according to some accounts, the Cities of the Plains are reconciled with new Rome.

Isn't the tree judged by its fruits?
And isn't it evident that, instead of a renascence, a far-spreading social movement bringing back the past, we are simply witnessing a transitory reaction, which many things explain?
The old world would rather not die, and is struggling in a final convulsion, reviving for a last hour before it is swept away by the overflowing river of human knowledge, whose waters ever increase.

And yonder, in the future, is the new world, which the real young ones will bring into existence, those who work, those who are not known, who are not heard.