You must set your door open wide for him." Bache and Janzen, however, had glanced at one another smiling.

And the latter, with his cold ironical air, slowly remarked: "Why does Monsieur Barthes hide himself?
A great many people think he is dead; he is simply a ghost who no longer frightens anybody." Four and seventy years of age as he now was, Barthes had spent nearly half a century in prison.

He was the eternal prisoner, the hero of liberty whom each successive Government had carried from citadel to fortress.

Since his youth he had been marching on amidst his dream of fraternity, fighting for an ideal Republic based on truth and justice, and each and every endeavour had led him to a dungeon; he had invariably finished his humanitarian reverie under bolts and bars.

Carbonaro, Republican, evangelical sectarian, he had conspired at all times and in all places, incessantly struggling against the Power of the day, whatever it might be.