And how delightful to yield to the hope of harmony in life--life which restored to the full exercise of its natural powers would of itself create happiness! When Guillaume ceased speaking, he seemed to be emerging from a dream; and he glanced at Pierre with some dismay, for he feared that he might have said too much and have hurt his feelings.

Pierre--moved though he was, for a moment in fact almost won over--had just seen the terrible practical objection, which destroyed all hope, arise before his mind's eye.

Why had not harmony asserted itself in the first days of the world's existence, at the time when societies were formed?
How was it that tyranny had triumphed, delivering nations over to oppressors?
And supposing that the apparently insolvable problem of destroying everything, and beginning everything afresh, should ever be solved, who could promise that mankind, obedient to the same laws, would not again follow the same paths as formerly?
After all, mankind, nowadays, is simply what life has made it; and nothing proves that life would again make it other than it is.

To begin afresh, ah, yes! but to attain another result! But could that other result really come from man?
Was it not rather man himself who should be changed?
To start afresh from where one was, to continue the evolution that had begun, undoubtedly meant slow travel and dismal waiting.

But how great would be the danger and even the delay, if one went back without knowing by what road across the whole chaos of ruins one might regain all the lost time! "Let us go to bed," at last said Guillaume, smiling.