THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 '<*
 
 THE DAWN 
 
 (LES A UBES)
 
 THE DAWN 
 
 (LES A UBES] 
 
 BY 
 
 EMILE VERHAEREN 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS
 
 Copyright, 1915 
 
 BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
 (Incorporated)
 
 Coftoga 
 Ubrary 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The poetry of fimile Verhaeren, more than that of any 
 other modern poet, is made directly out of the complaining 
 voices of the nerves. Other writers, certainly, have been 
 indirectly indebted to the effect of nerves on temperament, 
 but M. Verhaeren seems to express only so much of a 
 temperament as finds its expression through their im- 
 mediate medium. In his early books " Les Flamandes," 
 " Les Moines" (reprinted, with "Les Bords de la Route," 
 containing earlier and later work, in the first of his two 
 volumes of collected poems), he began by a solid, heavily 
 coloured, exterior manner of painting genre pictures in 
 the Flemish style. Such poems as " Les Paysans," with 
 its fury of description, are like a Teniers in verse; not 
 Breughel has painted a kermesse with hotter colours, a 
 more complete abandonment to the sunlight, wine, and 
 gross passions of those Flemish feasts. This first book, 
 " Les Flamandes," belongs to the Naturalistic movement ; 
 but it has already (as in the similar commencements of 
 Huysmans) so ardent a love of colour for its own sake, 
 colour becoming lyrical, that one realizes how soon this 
 absorption in the daily life of farms, kitchens, stables, will 
 give place to another kind of interest. And in " Les 
 Moines," while there is still for the most part the painting 
 of exteriorities, a new sentiment, by no means the religious 
 sentiment, but an artistic interest in what is less material, 
 less assertive in things, finds for itself an entirely new 
 
 i
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 scheme of colour. Here, for instance, was " Cuisson de 
 Pain," in the first book: 
 
 " Dchors, les grands fournils chauffaient leurs braises rouges, 
 Et deux par deux, du bout d'une planche, les gouges 
 Dans le ventre des fours engouffraient les pains mous. 
 
 " Et les flammes, par les gueules s'ouvrant passage, 
 Comme unc meute enorme et chaude de chiens roux, 
 Sautaient en rugissant leur mordre le visage." 
 
 Now, in' the second, we have " Soir Religieux " : 
 
 " Et void 1'angclus, dont la voix tranquillise 
 La douleur qui s'epand sur ce mourant decor, 
 Tandis que les grands bras des vieux clochers d'eglise 
 Tendent leurs croix de fer par-dessus les champs d'or." 
 
 But it is not until " Les Soirs " (the first of the three 
 books reprinted in the second volume of the collected 
 edition) that we find what was to be the really individual 
 style developing, itself. It develops itself at first with a 
 certain heaviness. Here is a poet who writes in images : 
 good ; but the images are larger than the ideas. Wishing 
 to say that the hour was struck, he says : 
 
 " Seul un beffroi, 
 Immensement vetu de nuit, cassait les heures." 
 
 And. indeed, everything must be done " immensement." 
 The word is repeated on every page, sometimes twice in a 
 stanza. The effect of monotony in rhythm, the significant, 
 chiming recurrence of words, the recoil of a line upon itself, 
 the dwindling away or the heaping up of sound in line after 
 line, the shock of an unexpected caesura, the delay and the 
 hastened speed of syllables : all these arts of a. very conscious 
 
 2
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 technique are elaborated with somewhat too obvious an in- 
 tention. There is splendour, opulence, and, for the first 
 time, " such stuff as dreams are made of." Description is 
 no longer made for its own sake; it becomes metaphor. 
 And this metaphor is entirely new. It may be called ex- 
 aggerated, affected even; but it is new, and it is ex- 
 pressive : 
 
 "Les chiens du desespoir, les chiens du vent d'automne, 
 Mordent de leurs abois les echos noirs des soirs, 
 Et 1'ombre, immensement, dans le vide, tatonne 
 Vers la lune, miree au clair des abreuvoirs." 
 
 In " Les Debacles," a year later, this art of writing in 
 coloured and audible metaphor, and on increasingly abstract 
 and psychological subjects, the sensations externalized, has 
 become more master of itself, and at the same time more 
 immediately the servant of a more and more feverish nerv- 
 ous organization. 
 
 "Tu seras le fievreux ploye, sur les fenetres, 
 D'ou Ton peut voir boadir la vie et ses chars d'or." 
 
 And the contemplation of this " fievreux " is turned more 
 and more in upon itself, finding in its vision of the outer 
 world only a mirrored image of its own disasters. The 
 sick man, looking down on his thin fingers, can think of 
 them only in this morbid, this monastic way : 
 
 " Mes doigts, touchez mon front et cherchez, la, 
 Les vers qui rongeront, tin jour, de leur morsure, 
 Mes chairs ; touchez mon front, mes maigres doigts, viola 
 Que mes veines deja, comme une meurtrissure 
 Bleuatre, etrangement, en font la tour, mes las 
 Et pauvres doigts et que vos longs ongles malades 
 
 3
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Battcnt, sinistrcmcnt, sur mcs tcmpcs, un glas, 
 Un pauvre glas, mes lents ct monies doigts ! " 
 
 Two years later, with " Les Flambeaux Noirs," what was 
 ne'rvous has become almost a sort of very conscious mad- 
 ness : the hand on one's own pulse, the eyes watching them- 
 selves in the glass with an unswerving fixity, but a breaking 
 and twisting of the links of things, a doubling and division 
 of the mind's sight, which might be met with, less pic- 
 turesquely, in actual madness. There are two poems, " Le 
 Roc " and " Les Livres," which give, in a really terrifying 
 way, the very movement of idea falling apart from idea, 
 sensation dragging after it sensation down the crumbling 
 staircase of the brain, which are the symptoms of the brain's 
 loss of self-control : 
 
 C'est la que j'ai bati mon ame, 
 Dites, serai-je seul avec mon ame? 
 Mon ame helas ! maison d'ebene, 
 Ou s'est fendu, sans bruit, un soir, 
 Le grand miroir de mon espoir. 
 
 Dites, serai-je seul avec mon ame, 
 En ce nocturne et angoissant domaine? 
 Serai-je seul avec mon orgueil noir, 
 Assis en un fauteuil de haine? 
 Serai-je seul, avec ma pale hyperdulie, 
 Pour Notre-Dame, la Folie? 
 
 In these poems of self-analysis, which is self-torture, 
 there is something lacerating, and at the same time bewilder- 
 ing, which conveys to one the sense of all that is most 
 solitary, picturesque, and poignant in the transformation of 
 an intensely active and keen-sighted reason into a thing 
 of conflicting visionary moods. At times, as in the remark- 
 
 4
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 able study of London "called " Les Villes," this fever of the 
 brain looks around it, and becomes a flame of angry and 
 tumultuous epithet, licking up and devouring what is most 
 solid in exterior space. Again, as in " Les Lois " and " Les 
 Nombres," it becomes metaphysical, abstract, and law tow- 
 ers up into a visible palace, number flowers into a forest : 
 
 " Je suis 1'hallucine de la foret des Nombres." 
 
 That art of presenting a thought like a picture, of which M. 
 Verhaeren is so accomplished a master, has become more 
 subtle than ever; and 
 
 " ces tours de ronde de 1'infini, le soir, 
 Et ces eourbes, et ces spirales," 
 
 of for the most part menacing speculations in the void, 
 take visible form before us, with a kind of hallucination, 
 communicated to us from that (how far deliberate?) 
 hallucination which has created them. Gradually, in " Les 
 Apparus dans mes Cheinins," in " Les Campagnes Hal- 
 lucinees," in " Les Villages Illusoires," in " Les Villes Ten- 
 taculaires," the hallucinations become entirely external : it 
 is now the country, the village, the town, that is to say, the 
 whole organised world, that agonises among cloudy phan- 
 toms, and no longer a mere individual, abnormal brain. 
 And so he has at once gained a certain relief from what had 
 been felt to be too intimately a part of himself, and has 
 also surrendered to a more profound, because a more ex- 
 tended, consciousness of human misery.. Effacing himself, 
 as he does, behind the great sp'ectacle of the world, as he 
 sees it, with his visionary eyes, in his own violent and 
 lethargic country, he becomes a more hopeless part of that 
 
 5
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 conspiracy of the earth against what man has built out of 
 the earth, of what man has built out of the earth against 
 the earth, which he sees developing silently among the 
 grass and bricks. All these books are a sort of philosophy 
 in symbols, symbols becoming more and more definite : " Le 
 Donneur de Mauvais Conseils," who drives up to the farm 
 gate: 
 
 "La vieille carriole en bois vert-pomine 
 Qui I'emmena, on n* sait d'ou, 
 Une folle la garda avec son homme 
 Aux carrefours des chemins mous. 
 Le cheval pait 1'herbe d'automne, 
 Pres d'une mare monotone, 
 Dont 1'eau malade reverbere 
 Le soir de pluie et de misere 
 Qui tombe en loques sur la terre"; 
 
 " Les Cordiers," the old man spinning his rope against the 
 sky, weaving the past into the future : 
 
 " Sur la route muette et reguliere, 
 Les yeux fixes vers la lumiere 
 Qui f role en se couchant les clos et les maisons, 
 Le blanc cordier visionnaire, 
 Du fond du soir aureolaire, 
 Attire a lui les horizons " ; 
 
 and, finally, the many-tentacled towns, drawing to themselves 
 all the strength and sap of the earth : " Les Spectacles," 
 " La Bourse," " Le Bazar," the monstrous and material 
 soul of towns. 
 
 Contrast these poems with those early poems, so brutal, 
 so Flemish, if you would see at a glance all the difference 
 between the Naturalistic and the Symbolistic treatment. 
 
 6
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The subject-matter is the same; the same eye sees; there 
 are the same 
 
 " vers batis comme une estrade 
 Pour la danse des mots et leurs belles parades." 
 
 But at first there is merely an eye that sees, and that takes 
 the visible world at its own valuation of itself. Later on, 
 things are seen but to be re-adjusted, to be set into relation 
 with other, invisible realities, of which they are no more 
 than the wavering and tortured reflection. And with this 
 poet, in his later manner, everything becomes symbol; the 
 shop, the theatre, the bank, no less than the old rope-maker 
 weaving the horizons together. And, inseparable from sym- 
 bol, ideas, primary ideas, come into the work more and more 
 effectually. 
 
 " Sur la Ville, d'ou les affres flamboient, 
 Regnent, sans qu'on les voie, 
 Mais evidentes, les idees : " 
 
 as he can write, on the last page of " Les Villes Tenta- 
 culaires," which points directly to " Les Aubes," in which 
 a sort of deliverance through ideas, as you may see, is 
 worked out. 
 
 And now I have to explain what I have tried to do in 
 my translation of this play. From " Les Flambeaux Noirs " 
 onwards, all M. Verhaeren's poems have been in vers libre, 
 but a verse very much firmer in rhythm, very much more 
 regular in accentuation, than the vers libre of most French 
 writers of the present day. " Les Aubes " is written in a 
 mixture of prose and verse, which, in France, is a very novel 
 experiment indeed. To English readers, accustomed to the 
 
 7
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Elizabethan drama, nothing can seem more natural than such 
 an alteration, marking the rise and fall of emotion and 
 solemnity in the speakers. I have translated M. Vcrhaeren's 
 verse very literally, and I have followed all his rhythms with 
 great exactitude. But, for the most part, I have used un- 
 rhymed in place of rhymed verse, reserving rhyme for the 
 speeches of the Seer, which are in a more definitely stanzaic 
 form in the original, and for the rondc at the beginning of 
 Scene II of Act IV. It seemed to me that this was the best 
 way of conveying M. Verhaeren's form into English ; and, 
 having finished my translation, I wrote to him, telling him 
 exactly what I had done. He replied : " Si Ic vers franqais 
 sans rime existait, je 1'aurais employe moi-meme. Seule- 
 ment le vers blanc franqais ne me dit rien. En anglais ce 
 doit etre mon souhait. Je vous appronve done entierement." 
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS.
 
 THE DAWN
 
 PERSONS OF THE DRAMA 
 
 THE CROWD 
 
 GROUPS: WORKMEN, BEGGARS, FARMERS, SOLDIERS, WOMEN, YOUNG 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN, PASSERS, BOYS, OLD MEN 
 JACQUES HERENIEN, tribune 
 PIERRE HERENIEN, his father 
 CLAIRE, his wife 
 GEORGES, his son 
 HAINEAU, brother of Claire 
 
 HORDAIN, captain of the enemy, disciple of Herenien 
 OLD GHISLAIN, farmer 
 THE CURE 
 AN OFFICER 
 AN EMISSARY 
 A GIPSY 
 
 A CONSUL of Oppidomagne 
 THE SHEPHERD 
 THE BEGGAR BENOIT 
 THE SEER of the Villages 
 THE SEER of the Cities 
 
 The groups act as a single person of multiple and 
 contradictory aspects 
 
 10
 
 ACT I 
 SCENE I 
 
 An immense open space into which converge, on the right, the roads 
 descending from Oppidomagne; on the left, the paths rising 
 from the plains. Lines of trees accompany them as far as the 
 eye can see. The enemy has surrounded the town. The coun- 
 try is on fire. Great flaring lights in the distance; the tocsin 
 sounds. 
 
 Groups of beggars fill the trenches. Others, standing on gravel- 
 heaps, scan the distance, and cry to one another. 
 
 THE BEGGARS 
 
 Look, from this mound you can see the villages all on 
 
 fire. 
 Climb the trees : we can see better. 
 
 [/4 beggar, clinging to a tree. 
 This way ! this way ! 
 
 BEGGARS (looking towards the town} 
 . The flames are getting brighter and bigger, towards the 
 
 town. 
 The powder-mills are blowing up. 
 
 [The sound of firing and explosions. 
 
 The works at the port are on fire, and the quays, and the 
 docks. The petroleum-sheds have caught fire. Yards 
 and masts burn black, and make crosses against the 
 sky! 
 
 II
 
 THE DAWN ACT i. sc. i. 
 
 BEGGARS (looking towards the plains) 
 
 The country is all red, over the plains. The fire has got 
 hold of Herenien's farm : they are throwing the furni- 
 ture into the street, pell mell. They are bringing the 
 beasts out of the stable with covered heads. They are 
 carrying out the old sick father on his great bed. 
 
 It is the farmer's turn now to have death on his heels. 
 
 Ah! what a fine, quick vengeance! They are cast out 
 themselves, they who cast us out. The crowd of them 
 heaps the highways. All our curses have carried; all 
 our blasphemies, all our prayers, all our angers ! 
 
 See there, the cattle flying to the fens, 
 
 The stallions rear and snap the trace in two-, 
 
 And snort against this woeful torch ; 
 
 And one has fled, with burning at his heels 
 
 And death upon his flying mane, 
 
 He turns his head about, and bites the flame 
 
 That eats upon his neck ; 
 
 Look all of you, and see the hands 
 
 Of madmen piling up the flame with pitchforks. 
 
 The bells madden in the wind. Churches and to\vers 
 crumble. God Himself might have fear. 
 
 Who knows why this war was unchained ? 
 
 All the kings desire Oppidomagne. They desire it to 
 the ends of the earth. 
 
 [People rush up excitedly, and disappear confusedly 
 in every direction. Some stop, and cry: 
 
 The fanners are piling up their furniture and their 
 clothes on wagons ; they are coming towards the 
 town ; they will pass here. 
 
 12
 
 ACT i. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 THE GROUP OF BEGGARS 
 
 This is the moment to make for Oppidomagne. 
 Follow them. 
 
 THE BEGGAR BENOIT 
 
 Follow them ? And of what race are you, then ? 
 Since you and I have been revolters, vagabonds, 
 Yes, you and I, all of us, all the time, 
 Have not these farming, homestead folk 
 Bent us and broken us with aching poverty? 
 They, they have been the bread, 
 And we, we have so sorely been the hunger, 
 That the sharp flames which eat 
 Their bursting granaries now 
 Seem to me like our very teeth 
 And the malevolent tearing of our vehement nails ! 
 Since I have come and gone, and come and gone, and 
 
 come again, 
 Barring with evil luck 
 The gates at which I beg, 
 
 My hands have spread the sickness that they breed, 
 My hands have rooted up their dead, 
 Have stolen their dead, my aged hands 
 Have gagged their daughters, and have ravished them ; 
 I hate them as a man may hate 
 The evillest thing upon the earth ; 
 And now at least let them be bashed 
 With their own pikes and their own poles. 
 
 AN OLD MAN 
 
 What is the good of bashing them? They will do no 
 
 more harm; they are more wretched than we are. 
 
 13
 
 THE DAWN ACT i. sc. i. 
 
 THE BEGGAR BENOIT 
 
 Be silent, you are too old to be a man any longer. 
 
 [Fresh bands hurry along the Oppidomagne road. 
 A group of zvorkmen appears. One of them 
 speaks to the beggars. 
 
 THE WORKMAN 
 Has Herenien passed yet ? 
 
 A BEGGAR (to the workman) 
 The shepherd knows him. Ask him. 
 
 THE WORKMAN (to the shepherd) 
 Has Herenien passed here? 
 
 THE SHEPHERD (in rags) 
 
 I am waiting for him. He has gone to look after his 
 father. I want to see him again. I cured him when 
 he was a child. 
 
 THE WORKMAN 
 He is sure to come. We will wait for him together. 
 
 THE SHEPHERD 
 
 How has he left the city? His enemies themselves ought 
 to have kept him there. 
 
 THE WORKMAN 
 
 Herenien does what he likes. His father was dying at 
 the village, and called him. 
 
 THE SHEPHERD 
 Do you think he will conquer Oppidomagne?
 
 ACT i. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 THE WORKMAN 
 
 Is he not the master of the people? 
 
 He is that wonderful and sacred thing 
 
 That lives, beyond the shadow of this hour, 
 
 Already in the future, which he touches ; 
 
 None better have discerned than he 
 
 How much of folly mixed with how much wisdom waits 
 
 To bring the new to-morrows in; 
 
 His clear books cast a light on all we think about. 
 
 'Tis there we other mortals learn 
 
 What is the way that leads to good 
 
 And what exalts a man, at such an hour, to be a God. 
 
 THE SHEPHERD 
 
 You are one of those who love and defend him in the 
 city. 
 
 THE WORKMAN 
 
 Hundreds we are, thousands we are 
 
 Who worship him, and follow him, 
 
 No matter where he goes, unto the very end. 
 
 [The workman goes on ahead, to watch for 
 Herenien. More people in flight, then a group 
 of peasants dragging after them carts and 
 hand-carts. The horses have climbed the hill, 
 with heavy loads. 
 
 OLD GHISLAIN 
 
 Our beasts are tired out. Let them get wind again. 
 Hallo, there, you beggars, has that scoundrel Herenien 
 passed this way? 
 
 15
 
 THE DAWN ACT i. sc. i. 
 
 THE BEGGAR BENOIT 
 Old Ghislain, be silent. 
 
 OLD GHISLAIN 
 
 Be silent! be silent! why? who for? Herenien is one of 
 you then? 
 
 THE BEGGAR BENOIT 
 
 Old Ghislain, we are the power here, and we can strike 
 you down, before you have so much time as to cry 
 murder. If, for all these years and these years, you 
 have thrown to us at your doors the refuse of your 
 pigs and the washings of your kitchen, we too, for all 
 these years and these years, have we not given you 
 our prayers and our avesl We are quits for the past, 
 and the present is ours. 
 
 [He advances towards Father Ghislain menacingly. 
 
 A PEASANT (running up) 
 
 Old Ghislain, Old Ghislain, your farm, " Tinkling 
 Meadow," has spread the fire to the whole of " Wolf 
 Plain." 
 
 The trees are burning, on the roads, 
 
 And the whole fir-wood snorts 
 
 And cries and howls aloud, 
 
 And all the flames spire up, 
 
 Up to the clouds, 
 
 And the flames bite the very sky ! 
 
 OLD GHISLAIN 
 
 Well, and what then? and what has that to do with me? 
 Let all the plain and all the woods begone, 
 
 16
 
 ACT i. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 And let the wind, the air, and the sky burn, 
 And let the earth itself break as a pebble breaks. 
 
 [ With a change of tone. 
 Just now this beggar talked of killing me. 
 
 [To the beggar Benoit. 
 Well, do it, then ; be quick with you ! 
 Here are my hands, here are my arms, that I have sold 
 For a vain labour ; here too is my obstinate brain ; 
 Here is my skin withered in all its pores, 
 Here is my back, here are the rags of me, 
 The ruin that I drag about 
 All the long years, all the long years ! 
 Truly I ask myself, why is it that I live? 
 I dig a field the frost will reap, 
 I farm the meadows that are evil-starred ; 
 All that my father hoarded up, farthing by farthing, all 
 That he had squeezed, and hid, and burrowed, like a 
 
 miser, 
 
 I have lost all, eaten it all. 
 
 I have implored my sons : they have devoured me ; 
 They have been swallowed up in the unfruitful town, 
 They have preferred a life unfruitful, infamous; 
 Hamlets and little towns are dead ; 
 Oppidomagne has sapped the strength of them, 
 Oppidomagne has drained the blood of them ; 
 And now, behold 
 In every acre and in. every close 
 Branching abroad the several maladies 
 Of water and of earth and air and sun! 
 
 A PEASANT 
 
 Your sorrows are ours. We are. all equally wretched. 
 
 17
 
 THE DAWN ACT i. sc. i. 
 
 OLD GHISLAIN 
 
 When I was but a child, we feasted sowing-time, 
 The soil was kindly then to folk and to horned beasts, 
 The flax came up like happiness in flower, 
 But now, but now men fear the earth. 
 And surely needs must something have been violated, 
 Some sacred and some obscure thing ; 
 Now 'tis the coal that all belongs to, kept, 
 Once, in the covering night. 
 The netted rails, upon the plains bestarred 
 With golden signals, swarm; 
 
 Trains graze the meadow-lands, and pierce the banks; 
 The living skies are eaten up with piercing smoke ; 
 The grass bleeds, and the virgin herb, harvest itself, 
 Feed on the sulphur's poisonous breath. 
 'Tis now 
 
 That, terrible in victory, come forth 
 Iron, and lead, and fire ; 
 And hell itself comes forth with them ! 
 
 [ The beggars recoil, and cease to threaten. 
 
 A. BEGGAR 
 Poor man ! 
 
 OLD GHISLAIN 
 
 Poor man ! But no ! 
 
 [Drawing towards him a peasant, and pointing to 
 
 an enclosure which is burning. 
 
 You think, do you, that it was the enemy set fire to my 
 enclosure? Undeceive yourselves. [Showing his 
 hands.] It was these two hands. 
 
 And my woods by " Firefly Pond " ? These hands again. 
 
 18
 
 ACT i. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 And my granaries and my ricks? These always. 
 No, no, Old Ghislain isn't a poor man. It is he, 
 he only perhaps, who sees clear. We don't respect 
 our fields; we lose patience with the slow and sure 
 of things; we kill the germs; we overheat them; 
 we arrange, we reason, we contrive. The earth isn't 
 a wife now ; it's a kept woman ! 
 
 And now, see how the enemy annihilates it ! 
 
 Where it was wounded by the town, 
 
 'Tis burnt by war, the torch of war ; 
 
 Where the wise man had wellnigh drained it dry, 
 
 The bullets fire it now. 
 
 Alas, alas, this is the death of it ! 
 
 There is no need of rain or dewfall now, 
 
 There is no need of snow about the mountain's head, 
 
 Nor yet of sun, nor of months clear and sweet, 
 
 And it were better at one stroke 
 
 To end, ending the country-side. 
 
 A PEASANT 
 Truly, Old Ghislain is not sound in his head. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 It is a crime to blaspheme the earth. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 We do not know what to believe. 
 
 [The village Seer appears; he hums, imitating by 
 his gestures the flight of the fiery crows. 
 
 THE SEER 
 
 The forests fly and the meadow flows, 
 And the storm puts ruddy fingers forth 
 
 19
 
 THE DAWN ACT i. sc. i. 
 
 In crosses to the south and north. 
 It is the hour of the Fiery Crows. 
 
 They swoop 041 house and they sweep on hedge, 
 With frantic claws and wings stretched wide, 
 And with their burning plumes they fledge 
 The shifting skies on every side. 
 
 So swift they wing from banks and briars 
 Their unreturning passage out, 
 They seem the messengers of the fires 
 That ring the whole round world about. 
 
 Terror attends without a sound 
 
 The mystery of their silent flight ; 
 
 Their beaks are sharp to rend the ground, 
 
 And savage there to ravage there 
 
 The very heart of earth from our delight. 
 
 The seeds we sow, ere we have sown them, die, 
 The hayricks, with their leaping flames that wing 
 Their flying way towards the sunsetting, 
 Seem, in the smoke that whirls them high, 
 Like wild and bloody horses galloping. 
 
 This is the hour that was foretold. 
 
 Ho, bells ! ho, bells ! the bells have tolled ; 
 
 Toll for the death of harvest, and the death of all. 
 
 This is the hour that was foretold. 
 
 Ho, the death-bells ! ho, the death-bells ! the bells have 
 
 tolled ; 
 
 Toll the death-bells for the world's funeral. 
 
 20
 
 ACT i. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 OLD GHISLAIN 
 
 Ah well, it is he who is in the right, the seer, the mad- 
 man, he, whom we all mocked, whom I mocked 
 myself, and whom I have never understood. Ah, 
 the formidable light is there now. 
 
 [He points to the horizon. 
 
 But he knew it long ago. And we were there, all of us, 
 
 with an old hope, with our old illusions, putting the 
 
 poor little bar of our common-sense between the 
 
 spokes of the terrible wheels of destiny. 
 
 [A troop of young folks from the villages, farm 
 
 labourers, workmen, stable-maids, beggars, carry 
 
 forward Pierre Herenien on a litter. A priest 
 
 accompanies them. The dying man signs to 
 
 them that he suffers too much, and that they 
 
 must stop. 
 
 JACQUES HERENIEN 
 Here, my friends. Set him down gently. 
 
 [Helping those who carry him. Then, as if 'speaking 
 
 to himself: 
 
 Poor old man, poor old man ! who could not die in his bed, 
 like his father ! Oh, these wars, these wars, they must 
 be hated with a diamond-like hatred. 
 
 PIERRE HEREN.IEN 
 Herenien, Herenien! 
 
 JACQUES HERENIEN 
 
 Here I am, father, close to you, close to your hands and 
 your eyes ; close to you; as in the old times, as in 
 mother's times, so close, that I can hear your heart beat. 
 21
 
 THE DAWN ACT i. sc. i. 
 
 Do you see me ? do you hear me ? Do you feel that it is 
 I, and that I love you always ? 
 
 PIERRE HERENIEN (breatlung heavily) 
 
 This time, it is the end. You will not be able to carry me 
 to your home, in Oppidomagne. I am happy because 
 the plains are all about me. I have one favour to ask 
 of you, that you do not forbid the old cure to come to 
 me. 
 
 JACQUES HERENIEN 
 
 My father, you shall be obeyed in every will and wish. 
 Shall I go further off ? 
 
 PIERRE HERENIEN 
 
 I must be alone to confess. 
 
 [Hcrenien goes aside. The priest approaches. Old 
 Ghislain accosts the tribune timidly. He speaks to 
 him during the confession. 
 
 OLD GHISLAIN 
 
 Monsieur Herenien*, I see you are always good. I thought 
 
 otherwise. You rule Oppidomagne, and in our farms 
 
 we talk of you. My sons defend you. Perhaps they 
 
 are right. But tell me, now that the country is dead, 
 
 how are we going to live? Where shall we find a 
 
 corner to sow the seed, and grow the corn? Where 
 
 shall we find an acre that the smoke and the sewers and 
 
 the poisons and the war have not spoilt ? tell me, tell me ! 
 
 [Hcrenien remains silent. His whole attention is 
 
 given to his father. He merely shrugs his shoulders 
 
 slightly when Old Ghislain has done speaking. 
 
 22
 
 ACT i. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 THE SHEPHERD (who has slowly approached Herenien) 
 Jacques, do you remember me? 
 
 JACQUES HERENIEN 
 
 What! you are still alive, old shepherd? 
 
 [Embraces him with great emotion. 
 
 THE SHEPHERD 
 
 I went a great way off, yonder, for years ; I have seen new 
 and marvellous countries. One wanders on like that, 
 from day to day, from moor to moor, and one gets back 
 in time to see someone die ! 
 
 PIERRE HERENIEN 
 I ask pardon of all whom I have offended. 
 
 THE CURE 
 
 Do not be troubled, you were a Christian, you will be saved. 
 
 [The priest absolves him. 
 
 JACQUES HERENIEN (leading the shepherd up to the 
 
 dying man} 
 
 Father, this is the shepherd ; you know him well, the shep- 
 herd of " Tinkling Meadow," the oldest of your serv- 
 ants and of your friends. 
 
 PIERRE HERENIEN 
 
 [Looking for a long time at the shepherd, and then, 
 all of a sudden, recognising him, seising his arm, 
 and drawing him toivards him. In almost a firm 
 voice: 
 
 23
 
 THE DAWN ACT i. sc. i. 
 
 When I am dead, shepherd, destroy all the old seeds. They 
 are full of evil germs ; they are rotten ; they are mouldy. 
 It is not with them that the soil shall have its espousals. 
 And you, who have been everywhere, you shall sow 
 new seed in my fields and in my meadows ; living seed, 
 fresh seed, good seed that you have seen and found 
 good; yonder, in the virgin countries of the earth. 
 [A pause. The shepherd boii's his head and kneels. 
 
 The beggars and the porters do the same. 
 And now turn me to the sun. 
 
 [He is obeyed; but in the west, where the sun is then 
 going doivn, the burning villages illuminate the 
 country. The heat reaches to the dying man. 
 
 A PEASANT (pointing to Pierre Hercnien) 
 The shadow of the fire passes over his face. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 He turns to the fire. 
 
 ANOTHER (to those about Pierre Herenien) 
 Take care, take care, he must not see the flames. 
 
 Turn him to the right. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 This way, this way, to the right, to the right. 
 
 [But the old man clings to the litter, and raises him- 
 self, his face towards the setting sun and the fires. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 Poor man! if he knew! 
 
 24
 
 ACT i. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 PIERRE HERENIEN (in a scarcely audible voke) 
 
 Jacques Herenien, come close to me, close. Let me die 
 touching you with my fingers (he caresses him}, and 
 looking that way with my eyes at what I have loved 
 most in the world. I have loved you to distraction ; 
 I have never denied you ; I have almost blessed the 
 sorrows that you have given me; and, while I have 
 loved you, I have loved the earth. I have lived with 
 the sun, as with God; it was the visible master of 
 things. It would have been like a punishment if I had 
 died in the night, in its absence. Happily, it is there 
 before me, and I reach out my arms to it. (He lifts 
 himself towards the conflagration.} I can see it no 
 longer, but I still feel the good, conquering light. 
 
 JACQUES HERENIEN murmurs: 
 
 Father! father! 
 
 [not knowing whether he should disabuse his father, 
 or see in these words a sudden prediction. 
 
 PIERRE HERENIEN 
 
 I feel it, I love it, I understand ; it is from there, now, that 
 
 the only springtides now possible must come ! 
 
 [He falls back, and dies: Jacques Herenien embraces 
 
 his father, pressing his lips on his mouth as if he 
 
 would gather the first truth that has ever left them. 
 
 JACQUES HERENIEN 
 
 Did he know what he was saying? " The only springtides 
 now possible ! " 
 
 [Slowly Herenien returns to himself out of his reverie. 
 25
 
 THE DAWN ACT i. sc. i. 
 
 The beggars, peasants, and workmen surround him. 
 The shepherd holds his hands and draws him close. 
 The porters raise the body and move onward. At 
 this moment a troop of women and children coming 
 from the city turn into the open space from the 
 upper roads. It is led by old men. 
 
 AN OLD MAN (stopping and pointing to Pierre Herenien) 
 A dead man ! and Herenien following the bier ! 
 
 ANOTHER 
 And this crowd? 
 
 ANOTHER 
 It is the whole country-side flocking towards Oppidomagne. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 
 Do they suppose they will be welcome there? 
 
 [He calls: 
 Herenien ! Herenien ! 
 
 HERENIEN 
 Who calls me? 
 
 THE OLD MAN 
 
 Oppidomagne has shut itself in within its walls ; it will not 
 permit the plain to send it its vagabonds and its dead ! 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 I am returning home ; I have lost my father ; I wish to bury 
 him myself, and withdraw him from pillage and prof- 
 anation. 
 
 26
 
 ACT i. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 THE OLD MAN 
 
 They will drive you back with bullets, they are turning out 
 all who do not help in the defences. 
 
 ANOTHER OLD MAN 
 
 They are blowing up the bridges. The ramparts are bris- 
 tling with troops. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 
 The city no longer knows whom it casts out. No one will 
 recognise you. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 It is mad to go that way. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 It is risking your life. 
 
 ANOTHER (entreatingly) 
 Stay with us, among us. You will save us. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 I swear to you that I will enter Oppidomagne. If you 
 doubt, follow me. 
 
 AN OLD MAN 
 We cannot. 
 
 A PEASANT 
 
 Better die in our own homes. 
 
 [The beggars, the old men, and some peasants remain. 
 The rest follow Herenien. The funeral train dis- 
 appears "slowly. 
 
 27
 
 THE DAWN ACT i. sc. i. 
 
 AN OLD MAN 
 
 Herenien is the only man still firm and stable, in these hours 
 of suspended thunder. Perhaps, after all, they will 
 welcome him. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 As for those who follow him, they will all be killed. 
 
 ANOTHER (turning towards the country) 
 
 Look yonder ; the enemy teaches the elements to make war. 
 He encircles them, deploys them, masters them, throws 
 them forward. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 And the country once dead, they will destroy the cities. 
 
 AN OLD MAN OF THE TOWNS (older than the others') 
 
 O these cities ! these cities ! 
 
 And their tumults and their outcries 
 
 And their wild furies and their insolent attitudes 
 
 Against the brotherhood of men ; 
 
 O these cities ! and their wrath against the skies, 
 
 And their most terrible, most bestial, show, 
 
 And their stocked market of old sins, 
 
 And their vile shops, 
 
 Where wreathe, in knots of golden grapes, 
 
 All the unclean desires, 
 
 As, on a time, garlands of flowery breasts 
 
 Wreathed the white bodies of Diana's maids ! 
 
 These cities ! 
 
 The sense of youth is withered up in them ; 
 
 The sense of heroism is sapped in them;
 
 ACT i. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 The sense of justice, as a useless thing, is cast away from 
 
 them. 
 
 O these cities ! these cities ! 
 
 That spread themselves abroad like heaps of rottenness, 
 Like soft or vehement breeds of slime 
 Whose mouths and suckers wait to suck 
 The noble blood of all the world ! 
 
 A PEASANT (to the old man) 
 
 Without you, the people of cities, our harvests would flour- 
 ish, our barns would run over with corn ! Without 
 you, we should still be strong, healthy, and tranquil ; 
 without you, our daughters would not be prostitutes, 
 nor our sons soldiers. You have soiled us with your 
 ideas and with your vices, and it is you who let loose 
 war upon us. 
 
 ONE FROM THE TOWNS (to the peasants} 
 It is of you that we should complain. Why do you flock in, 
 so many and so- greedy ? From your fields you hasten 
 to us to traffic with us, to steal from us, and with so 
 stubborn a mind, so narrow, so bitter, and so violent a 
 soul, that you are scarcely to be distinguished from 
 bandits. You have set your malice and your thievish- 
 ness behind all our counters. You have cumbered little 
 by little all the desks of the world. If the age grinds 
 its teeth with a great noise of meddling and servile 
 pens, it is your millions of hands that were willing to 
 copy till death. 
 
 ONE FROM THE VILLAGES 
 
 You had need of us. You filled our plains with your ap- 
 peals. 
 
 29
 
 THE DAWN ACT i. sc. i. 
 
 ONE FROM THE TOWNS 
 
 You are the dough that mediocrity kneads, the regiments 
 that nullity numbers. You are the cause of slow usury, 
 idleness, and sluggishness. Without you, the city 
 would still be nervous, light, valiant; without you, sur- 
 prise, vivacity, daring might have come back again. 
 Without you, slumber would not have paralysed life, 
 nor death soaked space with blood. 
 
 AN OLD MAN 
 
 Eh, but say now, do you think the enemy is waiting all this 
 time, with folded arms, until you have settled your dis- 
 putes? If our city perishes, certainly we might swathe 
 it in a shroud woven of all the needless words, of all 
 the meaningless discussions, of all the loquacity and elo- 
 quence, lavished upon it for centuries. The talkers are 
 the only guilty ones. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 
 Everything has conspired against Oppidomagne. There are 
 a thousand causes which ruin it, as there are a thousand 
 worms that attack a corpse. Happily there is always 
 some Christ, far off, on the horizon. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 
 Yesterday, the gravest insurrection terrified the city. The 
 people took refuge in the cemetery, which overlooks the 
 old quarters. The tombs served for ramparts. They 
 are on strike. The Regent's soldiers surround it and 
 cut it off.
 
 ACT i. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 A PEASANT* 
 Oppidomagn.e is besieged, then, and besieging. 
 
 THE OLD MAN 
 As they did at Rome, the crowd has made an Aventine. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 
 O the foul shame of being one of this degraded race, 
 Whose mortal and whose trumpeting wantonness 
 Affrights the very reason of the earth. 
 Now in these hours of thunder in the air, 
 Instead of setting to, 
 Now at the last, to seek for strength out of the common 
 
 strength, 
 
 It falls apart, it spreads abroad, it drops away. 
 Say, is there then no longer some unwavering light, 
 Is there no longer then an axiom of aught, 
 Is there no longer a strong hand with us 
 To scourge the wandering flock of these soft wills of ours ? 
 Say, is there then a man no more? 
 
 [The village Seer, who has never ceased roaming to 
 and fro, prophesies: 
 
 THE SEER 
 
 The times which were to come have come at last, 
 
 Wherein the city, long the mirror of all eyes, 
 
 The marvellous mirror that had glassed 
 
 The eyes of the world, 
 
 Scatters the glory of its memories. 
 
 Oppidomagne ! 
 
 With thy qu^iys, columns, bridges, thy triumphal arch,
 
 THE DAWN ACT i. sc. i. 
 
 Behold against thy pride 
 Th.e whole horizons march! 
 
 Oppidomagne ! 
 
 With thy towers, monuments, belfries, far and wide, 
 Behold in blood of fire written upon thy walls 
 The sign and seal of funerals ! 
 
 Oppidomagne! Now is the hour 
 
 When all things fixed shall crumble into sand, 
 
 Unless without delay, 
 
 This day, 
 
 Some mighty one puts forth his hand! 
 
 AN OLD MAN 
 
 Oh, whoever he is, how we shall all shout for him, and how 
 we shall be the first to bow down to him ! 
 
 THE SEER 
 
 This one that we await 
 
 Shall be so great, 
 
 That needs must all you rise to him, maybe 
 
 If you would know that this indeed is he. 
 
 AN OLD MAN 
 He is not yet born. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 No one can guess him. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 
 No one proclaims him. 
 
 32
 
 ACT i. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 ANOTHER 
 And Jacques Herenien? 
 
 ANOTHER 
 Jacques Herenien ? He is mad ! 
 
 SCENE II 
 
 As the curtain rises, a cordon of horse soldiers bars the gate to 
 Oppidomagne. The soldiers are at work undermining the 
 bridges across the river. Patrols mount guard on the slope and 
 the ramparts. A general, field-glass in hand, inspects the 
 horizon. He watches what is going- on, while a messenger runs 
 up, handing an order to the officer in command of- the cavalry. 
 
 THE OFFICER (reading} 
 
 " Orders are given, to admit no one into the city ; except 
 the tribune Jacques Herenien. It is important that he 
 should realise the favour that is shown him. He is to 
 be opposed as a matter of form. 
 
 (Signed) The Regency of Oppidomagne." 
 
 [Herenien appears on the main road, followed by the 
 
 crowd of ragged men, women, workmen, farmers, 
 
 and old men. Finding that entry will be difficult, he 
 
 advances by himself to the officer. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 I am of those who must be heard-. Oppidomagne is the 
 city where I have grown up, suffered, fought for my 
 ideas, which are the greatest that a man can bear about 
 with him. I loved Oppidomagne when it seemed in- 
 vincible. To-day I desire my place among those who 
 
 33
 
 THE DAWN ACT i. sc. n. 
 
 die for her. And I desire the like for all those who 
 are here, for all whom I have met with on the way. It 
 is I who have called them to follow me. I have turned 
 back towards courage the flood that was going down 
 to cowardice. 
 
 THE OFFICER 
 
 I know who you are, but I cannot alter the orders I have 
 received. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 What are the orders ? 
 
 THE OFFICER 
 
 To keep that barrier shut. 
 
 [He points to the gate of the city. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Then it must be that this Oppidomagne, 
 At the tremendous hour 
 
 When mountainous woe and terror fall upon its pride, 
 With the mere poor and little words of a command 
 Shuts to its gates, 
 Shuts from its door 
 Those that are bringing it 
 Their blood, their hearts, 
 
 And the most vehement flame of all their loves ! 
 I, who so oft at night-time, at the harbour-side, 
 Have seen the seas 
 Press on and cast abroad in it 
 The formidable and free universe, 
 Even I who love her, be she evil or good, 
 I who so strangely love, I who so blindly love, 
 
 34
 
 ACT i. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 That I am as a son, yet passionate as a lover, 
 I must go forth from her, and like a hunted beast! 
 An order! But it is such orders that ruin a people. Do 
 you reckon up the number of defenders when the sor- 
 row is infinite? Do you separate for death those that 
 the same danger unites? I insist that you make room 
 for all. 
 
 THE OFFICER 
 Impossible. 
 
 [Herenien goes up to the corpse of his father, and un- 
 covers his head and shoulders. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 For twenty years this man there was a soldier; 
 
 He served your leaders over the whole earth, 
 
 He has fought at the poles, in the desert, and on the sea; 
 
 Thrice he has crossed Europe from end to end 
 
 In a tempestuous cloud 
 
 Of frantic flags and golden eagles and great lights ! 
 
 Is it to him you close the gates of Oppidomagne? 
 
 THE OFFICER 
 To all who are with you. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Know, then, that it is in the name of the clearest, simplest, 
 most unvarying law that I appeal to your honour as a 
 man. In a few days this plain will be ruin, putrefac- 
 tion, and blood. You have a mere word to say, and all 
 our lives, to which we all have a right, will be saved. 
 The help that men owe to men, you who bear arms, 
 35
 
 THE DAWN ACT i. sc. n. 
 
 you first of all owe to us. This duty wipes out all 
 others. There was a time when the very name of 
 army and of watchword was unknown. 
 
 THE OFFICER 
 Disperse, disperse. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 [He looks tozvards the vast crowd which follows him, 
 reckons up the number of the soldiers with a glance, 
 and goes up to his dead father. 
 
 I ask the pardon of this dead man for desecrating his funeral 
 with blood. 
 
 [At this moment the general, who observes the scene 
 from the height of the rampart, approaches the 
 officer. 
 
 HERENIEN (to the crowd} 
 
 I have used all means, there remains but one. You all 
 know it. We are a thousand, and these, but a few. 
 (Pointing to the soldiers.) Some among them have 
 fathers and children among you. They are ours ; they 
 will let us pass. Let the women come forward: they 
 will not fire on them. 
 [Advancing alone, while the crowd forms in order. 
 
 To the soldiers: 
 
 He who commands you bids you commit a crime. Disobey 
 him. The right is yours. 
 
 [Already the general has rejoined the officer, and 
 reprimands him. The words " stupidity " and 
 "folly" are heard. The general advances rapidly 
 towards Hcrenien and salutes him. 
 36
 
 ACT ii. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 THE GENERAL 
 
 Jacques Herenien, enter Oppidomagne. The Regency bids 
 you welcome. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 At last! I knew that you had need of me, and that it is 
 in your interest that I come into your midst. 
 
 [Pointing to the crozvd. 
 
 And all these follow me; the old men, the children, the 
 women, they shall all return home, they will all be 
 useful. And you, my father, you shall rest in the 
 tomb where my two children sleep already. 
 [The general makes no objection. The ranks open. 
 Jacques Herenien and some workmen enter the city, 
 but no sooner have they passed than suddenly, at 
 the officer's command, the ranks close. The body of 
 Pierre Herenien, the porters, the old men, the peas- 
 ants, the women and the children are thrust back. 
 Fresh battalions hastening up lend their aid. 
 Jacques Herenien, astonished, turns to make his 
 way back. He is heard to cry: "Cowardice," 
 "Treason," "Infamy." But the tumult covers his 
 voice. He is violently hurried into the city. And 
 the howling crowd is driven back into the plain. 
 
 ACT II 
 
 SCENE I 
 
 Herenien's house. Door to right ; commonplace furniture ; stove at 
 back. Things lying about pell-mell. On the table, clothes that 
 are being mended, children's toys. Heaps of books on the chairs. 
 
 37
 
 THE DAWN ACT n. sc. i. 
 
 Qaire, Herenien's wife, finishes lighting the lamps. She waits. 
 All at once there is a noise of cheering in the street. Herenien 
 enters. He clasps his wife in a long embrace. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 We have buried my father to the left of the little ones, 
 under the yew-tree which overlooks our burial-place. 
 He will rest there as he did in the village; his body 
 will mingle with the elementary life of the herbs and 
 plants that he loved so much. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 Did they spy on you ? 
 
 [During this scene Herenien changes his black clothes 
 for indoor things. Impression of home. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 I don't know. There were only a few of us. On the way 
 back, we passed the crowd; newsboys were calling the 
 news of the Aventine. Everybody made for the pa- 
 pers. Some men carried torches and sang. Along the 
 boulevards and avenues houses lay open, split or pierced 
 by the bombs. The rubbish was all over the pavements. 
 Not a single gas-lamp was lighted. At the National 
 Place a quarry-man called my name: that was all. 
 When they allowed me to bring my father into Oppi- 
 domagne after God knows what difficulties ! I prom- 
 ised that he should be buried without any crowd of 
 people. I have kept my word. 
 [Finding a roll of bank-notes on the writing-desk: 
 
 What is this ? 
 
 38
 
 ACT ii. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 They have sent the remainder of the account. 
 
 [Taking a note out of her pocket. 
 Look. Your last book has been read everywhere. 
 
 HERENIEN (looking at the letter} 
 
 They must read and discuss me; they must hunger and 
 thirst after my justice! 
 
 [He puts the letter on the table, and opens the window. 
 Going nearer to Claire. 
 
 I thought of us, during that simple and homely funeral. 
 I would like to have felt you by my side, when the 
 coffin sank into the earth ! My heart was so tortured, 
 so full of pent-up tenderness, so walled up within my- 
 self. Why had I not your hands in mine, to mark there 
 the half of my mourning! 
 
 [He takes her hand. 
 
 You are indeed my sweet and valiant one. You know 
 me, you understand me, before you alone I dare be 
 without compunction what I truly am: a poor human 
 being, seldom calm, full of vehement pride and tender- 
 ness, the more exacting because I love the more. 
 Where is the boy? 
 
 CLAIRE (points to the room at the right} 
 In our room, asleep. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 How often I drove my father to despair! My fits and 
 
 starts of will were so wild that he used to beat me, and 
 
 I cried out under his blows, and shrieked, and yelled 
 
 at him all the same just what I pleased. And now to- 
 
 39
 
 THE DAWN ACT n. sc. i. 
 
 day I would strangle my son if he were to irritate 
 me. 
 
 [A shell bursts not far from the house. Hercnien 
 and Claire rush to the window. The crowd ap- 
 plauds Hercnien. 
 
 This, now, is the best time to love. There is nothing like 
 these crises and alarms for bringing people closer to- 
 gether. I seem to see you in the first months of our 
 love; you seem to me even more beautiful ; I bring you 
 my love just as sincere; just as ardent, just as absolute 
 as ever. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 And I love and serve you with all my soul. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 This funeral (in which some part of myself has gone, I 
 know not what, a part of my life, my childhood) tore 
 me away from my burning existence, given up to all, 
 taken by all, scattered wide, far from you, far from 
 us, all through Oppidomagne. I seemed to myself to 
 be in the village, in the desolate land of the visionary 
 plains ; prowling, at night, on the heath, or astride of 
 the wild colts in my father's fields. I remembered 
 the shepherds, the servants, the maid-servants. I re- 
 membered the \vay to school, to church, and the exact 
 sound of the parish bell. I was so sad and so happy ; 
 I longed to see you again, you and the child. (Put- 
 ting his arm round Claire.] And now, let me see your 
 eyes, your pale, sweet eyes, that love me more than all 
 others, and are the fairest lights in the world. (Lean- 
 ing his face over Claire.} Are they not faithful, and 
 40
 
 ACT ii. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 tender, and peaceful, and shining, and am I not foolish 
 to make them weep sometimes ? 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 Your words go further than your thoughts, when they are 
 unkind. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Oh ! I am not one of those who love tamely. But you, you 
 love me all the same, although you know my terrible 
 life, my real life, my real reason of being on the earth. 
 
 CLAIRE (with a slight tone of reproach) 
 You talk to me of that so often ! 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 And I will talk of it to you again; I will be brutal, and 
 weary you, because it is my passion to be absolutely 
 sincere with you. You would be my wife no longer, 
 if I had to hide anything from you. I would rather 
 see you weep than lie to you. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 If you were otherwise, I should love you the less. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 And besides, you know very well that I exaggerate; that 
 really, when I assign you so small a space in my life, 
 I deceive myself and you. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 Ah, be what you will, tormentor or despot, what does it 
 matter? You belong to me, you and our child, to 
 all my love. 
 
 41
 
 THE DAWN ACT n. sc. i. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Ah, you indeed are my wife ! 
 
 When, on a night of June, 
 
 Long ago now, sweetly you gave me your soul, 
 
 Did I not swear that my lips 
 
 Never again should kiss 
 
 Another's lips, 
 
 Another's breast? 
 
 You were the flower of all the lakes and mists 
 
 That my impetuous hands 
 
 Have wrested from my haggard country 
 
 And planted in the heart of Oppidomagne ; 
 
 And 'tis the soil, the waters, and the meadow-lands, 
 
 That I behold and worship in your naked eyes. 
 
 And shall not we remain, hand in hand, heart to heart, 
 
 Lost in the love that sets us free, 
 
 Adoringly, forgivingly, exultingly, 
 
 While the insatiable days eat up the time 
 
 Our fates shall let us live? 
 
 Death like a fire enrings us round about, 
 
 Night is an ambush set, and evening a disaster; 
 
 And see, in the insensate skies, 
 
 The stars hurtle together and consume, 
 
 And the hot fiery ashes fall! 
 
 [Hcrcnien's child comes in to embrace his father, who 
 
 hardly notices and seems to hare forgotten him. 
 
 The crowd goes by, with vociferous shouting. 
 
 Hcrcnien rushes to the unndozv. Shouts are heard. 
 
 "The Exchange is on fire!" "The Arsenal is on 
 
 fire!" "The Port is on fire!" The reflection of 
 
 the flames illuminates the room. 
 
 42
 
 ACT ii. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 And what if this indeed ended Oppidomagne ! 
 
 And if these bonfires emptied from their mountain-tops 
 
 The smoking blood of sacrifice ? 
 
 Oppidomagne 
 
 Has gathered to its codes and ratified in laws 
 
 All that was once a hidden crime, a crafty murder, 
 
 Deceit or theft against true justice and true good. 
 
 And now that it is puffed and sated with its vices, 
 
 And drunk enough to drink the very dregs 
 
 That foul its gutters to the brim, 
 
 All the dull evils, all the muddy lusts, 
 
 Hang at its girdle, night and day, 
 
 And drain its breasts, like hungering wolves. 
 
 If then these palaces, these sheds, 
 
 If these bright arsenals, if these gloomy temples, fall, 
 
 Crumble to shameful dust, 
 
 The world will shout to see the red sparks fly, 
 
 To meet the future half way, on the wind. 
 
 But that the city itself should have an end, 
 
 Being the soul of future things, 
 
 That these should sink under the waves of flame ; 
 
 That the tied bundle of our fates 
 
 She in her hands yet holds, 
 
 Break in the furious feeble hands, 
 
 Break now, and break in face of death; 
 
 That the fair gardens of to-morrow 
 
 Whose gates she opened wide 
 
 Be wasted with the thunderbolt,. 
 
 And cumbered with dead things ; 
 
 It is impossible : he is mad who says it. 
 
 43
 
 THE DAWN ACT n. sc. i. 
 
 Oppidomagne, with all her happy hopes, 
 
 With all her beacons triumphing in the night, 
 
 Shall stand, shall stand erect, 
 
 As long as any men, whose faith is like my faith, 
 
 Have blood in them to shed, that faith bear fruit in them, 
 
 And that the blind and greedy world at length 
 
 Be fashioned to the will of the new gods ! 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 Oh! the terrors and the sorrows that we shall have to 
 endure ! 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Whatever they may be, I forbid you to complain of them. 
 We live in formidable days of terrors, agonies, and new 
 births. The unknown becomes the master. Men shake 
 with an immense movement of the head the weight 
 of all the errors of ages'. Utopia resigns its wings, and 
 takes root in the earth. Our very besiegers know of it. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 Had you any news of the enemy this morning? 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Not yet; but what the captain, Hardain, predicted yester- 
 day, gave me fire and flame for weeks and weeks. This 
 captain belongs to the race of men who realise the 
 impossible. Think! he and I, to kill the war dead, 
 here, before the discharged and powerless chiefs ! To 
 bring about the public reconciliation of the foreign sol- 
 diers and ours! To exhaust all the forces of one's 
 being, all the energies of one's faith, for that supreme 
 end ! What a splendid dream ! 
 44
 
 ACT ii. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 CLAIRE (gently ironical} 
 What a delusion ! 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 We should never reject a hope when it spreads such wings. 
 What remains improbable to-day, will be accomplished 
 fact to-morrow. Hordain relies so far only on dim 
 surmisings, a deep but stifled discontent, secret under- 
 standings and unions. The troops refuse to fight ; they 
 are tired out; they disband. Ideas of justice are in the 
 air. There is vague talk of concord ; the spark is set to 
 the grate. I await the breath of wind that shall set 
 the wood and straw alight. 
 [Herenien listens to the murmurs in the street. 
 
 There is a knock at the door. The Consul of Op- 
 
 pidomagne enters the room. 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 
 Jacques Herenien, I come to you in the name of the 
 Regency of Oppidomagne, to ask you to accomplish 
 a great duty. Far as our ideas are from one another, 
 an understanding between us is certain, when it is a 
 question of saving the city. I seem to speak to the 
 future leader of this people that we love in different 
 ways, but both of us ardently. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Preambles are useless. I ask what brings you, and what 
 you expect of me. 
 
 [He motions to the Consul to sit doivn. 
 
 45
 
 THE DAWN ACT n. sc. i. 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 
 Up yonder, at the cemetery, the situation of your friends 
 is lamentable. They would not resist a serious attack ; 
 yesterday the Regency was anxious to bring them to 
 order ; but they seem to be numerous, young, hardy ; 
 they are needed for the defence of Oppidomagne. Up 
 to now, they were scarcely rebels ; they are disaffected, 
 on strike: that is all. To-morrow, when they have 
 seen the terrible conflagrations that are spreading yon- 
 der, perhaps they will in turn become incendiaries. 
 Hate counsels folly, and if they slay and pillage, it will 
 not indeed be the end of things, but it will be an end 
 in shame. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 I hold war in execration. This between men of the same 
 soil terrifies me more than any other. You, in 
 Oppidomagne, have moved heaven and earth to bring 
 it about. You have cultivated the misery of the peo- 
 ple; you have refused it bread, justice, dignity; you 
 have tyrannised it in its body and in its thought; you 
 have helped yourselves with its ignorance, as with your 
 disloyalty, your cleverness, your lying, your irony, and 
 your contempt. You are unworthy and culpable. 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 
 I believed you to have a more balanced, a more unclouded, 
 and a loftier judgment. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 I think and judge before you, as I would think and judge 
 before the enemy. I hate, but pity you. 
 46
 
 ACT ii. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 THE CONSUL (rising) 
 This is an outrage. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 It is a passion and frankness. 
 
 THE CONSUL' 
 It is above all injustice. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Come now! But shall I ever end if I begin to show you 
 the anger of the cities and the dread of the country? 
 
 My memory is faithful: it is armed 
 
 With those remembrances that shall cut deep as sickles. 
 
 It reckons up the murders you and yours have done, 
 
 It knows the soul you bear, and it defies you 
 
 To be but honest, loyal, just, 
 
 Or, without vice, strong in your strength. 
 
 But I forget myself to thus instruct you, 
 
 Knowing that you will turn again 
 
 To weave your spiders' webs of twisted perfidy. 
 
 Treachery is a sacred thing 
 
 For all of you : it holds you, hunts you, binds you up 
 
 Within a monstrous and most fatal forfeiture. 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 You have then no confidence? 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 None. 
 
 47
 
 THE DAWN ACT n. sc. i. 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 Then, I retire. [The Consul rises to leave. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 I wait. . . . 
 
 [The Consul hesitates, takes two steps, and changes 
 his mind. 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 
 Come, it would be folly to let our words get the better of 
 our deeds. Oppidomagne alone should occupy us. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 I had no other thought when I received you here. 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 
 A man of affairs and intelligence, such as you are, knows 
 better than anyone how we have spread abroad the 
 name and influence of Oppidomagne. 
 
 Its history is the history of its Regents 
 And of its Consuls, who, 'neath skies of flaming gold, 
 Across red soil that lighted up with blood, 
 Unto the end of the world, 
 
 Drew after them its host with their magnetic hand. 
 Our troubles, in these times, were many and were fruitful. 
 The people and its leaders both 
 Were rivals in the battle-field. And those, 
 Yonder, who threaten and lay siege to us, 
 Know what a crimson and triumphant fluttering, 
 Once, our insatiate flags, 
 
 Flung to the winds upon their plains of snow. 
 
 48
 
 ACT ii. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 Oppidomagne is splendid in the eyes of all, 
 Oppidomagne is vaster than the memory 
 The sea and earth and wind and sun have kept of it ; 
 Crime, and the noble deeds of war, divide its glory; 
 You only see, you only speak, its crimes. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Your glory is all ended, it has stooped to earth ; 
 
 With its illustrious sword itself has slain the right; 
 
 To-day another glory comes about, 
 
 Another rises in my breast, 
 
 Perfect and strong and virginal of stain. 
 
 And this glory is made up of the new and profound justice, 
 of private heroism, of ardent tenacity, of necessary and 
 temporary violence. It is less brilliant than yours, but 
 surer. The whole world awaits it. Both of us, you 
 with fear and I with fervour, feel it to be inevitable 
 and imminent. That is why you come to me ; that is 
 why I have the temerity to treat you as though you 
 were already conquered. Do what you will, you and 
 your caste, you are, at this moment, the prisoners of 
 my consent or my refusal. 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 You mistake. . . . 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 No ! Like me, you know well that you can do nothing 
 without my aid. In my hands, I hold all the deep 
 moral force of Oppidomagne. 
 
 49
 
 THE DAWN ACT n. sc. i. 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 
 You forget what the ruin of an empire would mean. All 
 the ancient interests, all the customs- of ages, sustain 
 it. And we have with us the army. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 The army? say rather, the chiefs; for the soldiers hesitate 
 or protest. They are on the eve of joining the people. 
 They are my hope and your fear. If they all obeyed 
 you, if you did not fear an immense insurrection, the 
 people and the soldiers together, you would have already 
 bombarded the Aventine. [A silence. 
 
 Well, you come to ask me, do you not, to go up yonder, 
 to the mountain, among the tombs, and enjoin on those 
 oppressed people to come down into the midst of those 
 who have enslaved them. Oh ! I see all the danger and 
 the peril of my mission ! 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 
 You are mistaken. The Regency begs you to announce that 
 the hour has come when perils are so great as to over- 
 come all rancour. Whoever believes in Oppidomagne 
 should turn hero. Our people has unknown possibili- 
 ties of regeneration. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 How would they be treated if they came down from up 
 yonder ? 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 
 The soldiers should return to their proper rank in the army, 
 the others should return to their homes and families. 
 50
 
 ACT ii. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 If poverty, since they have left, has crept in, it shall 
 be banished. For the rest, promise what you will : you 
 are loyal. We have confidence in you. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 Will you sign that for me? 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 
 It is done. [Hands him a written paper. 
 
 Read. [Herenien goes over it and appears satisfied. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 One last word. When I brought after me the farmers of 
 the villages, the old men and vagabonds of the cities, 
 why were they driven back from the walls, towards 
 the enemy? 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 It was an error. You should have been listened to. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 And who allowed me to bury my father among his own folk? 
 
 THE CONSUL 
 I myself. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Go then, and tell the Regency that I will go to the Aventine. 
 [Herenien goes to the zt'indozv and cries to the people 
 still standing in the street: "Let the man icho 
 comes out of my house pass ziithout a murmur: he 
 has done his duty. . . . To-night, at the cemetery, 
 yonder! " 
 
 51
 
 THE DAWN ACT n. sc. n. 
 
 SCENE II 
 
 At the Aventine (cemetery on a height). People assembled. 
 Ilaineau occupies the tribune: a tomb higher than the others. 
 Stacked arms are planted among the little funereal gardens. 
 Crosses, small pillars, pedestals and columns emerge from among 
 the flowers. On the wall surrounding it armed workmen are 
 on guard. Night is coming on. Fires are lighted. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 I conclude then, as I concluded yesterday : in a revolution 
 it is essential to strike at ideas in the person of those 
 who represent them. It is essential to go slowly, not 
 to be carried away, and to make for immediate ends. 
 Coldly, each of us will choose his man, his victim. No 
 one shall lie down to rest until the three Regents and 
 the two Consuls of Oppidomagne are dead. It is the 
 work of terror that brings the work of safety. 
 
 THE CROWD 
 
 Why proclaim what should be kept quiet? 
 Every man is master of his own knife. 
 Silence ! 
 
 HAIXEAU 
 
 The enemy burns the churches, the banks, the parliaments. 
 The Capitol and the Regency remain. Let us destroy 
 them. Let us go down by night, in bands, into Op- 
 pidomagne. 
 
 SOMEONE 
 
 Impossible, the Aventine is surrounded. 
 
 52
 
 ACT ii. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 HAINEAU 
 Someone can always be bought over. 
 
 THE CROWD 
 
 What is the use 01 these massacres? 
 One chief dies, and another takes his place. 
 We should conquer the whole mass. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 You must cut off his head if you would master the beast. 
 Once upon a time, in Oppidomagne, when we pro- 
 tested among ourselves, who dreamed of half-meas- 
 ures ? Then we used to admire those who swept away 
 things and people. Banks and theatres were blown up, 
 and fearless, unflinching, the admirable assassins of 
 old ideas died; they seemed to the judges madmen, but 
 to the people heroes. That was the time of ingenuous 
 sacrifices, tragical decisions, swift executions. Con- 
 tempt of life swept over the universe. Now to-day 
 everything is flabby and flaccid: energy is like an un- 
 strung bow. We prevaricate, wait, reason, calculate; 
 and you fear Oppidomagne conquered, though you 
 dared it when it was conquering. 
 
 THE CROWD 
 
 We love it now that it is besieged. 
 Our wives and children are there still. 
 Our strike will come to nothing. 
 Let us go back to Oppidomagne. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 When you will anything, you must will it in spite of every- 
 thing. The hour of the last anguish has come. 
 53
 
 THE DAWN ACT n. sc. n. 
 
 What matter the sorrows and the sobs of our mothers 
 if, thanks to our sufferings, new life is gained ! 
 
 SOMEONE (pointing to Haineau) 
 He has no children ! 
 
 HAINEAU 
 If I had, I would sacrifice them for the future. 
 
 SOMEONE 
 
 These are only words : you draw back when the time comes 
 for action. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 I have approved myself during the time of the revolt. 
 
 SOMEONE 
 You hid yourself when they were killing the people. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 If I had the thousand arms of a crowd, I would act alone, 
 and I would disdain you. . . . 
 
 [Hooting and jostling: Haineau is dislodged from the 
 tribune 
 
 A GROUP IN THE CROWD 
 There goes another who won't make fools of us any 
 
 more. 
 He is too base and cowardly. 
 
 ANOTHER GROUP 
 
 We loathe him, now that we know ourselves better. 
 We don't know what we want, now that we want it all 
 together. 
 
 54
 
 ACT ii. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 If we don't do something we are lost. 
 Let us go back to Oppidomagne. 
 
 [The tumult quiets down. Le Breux mounts the 
 tribune. 
 
 LE BREUX 
 
 Haineau let himself be carried away for nothing. He ac- 
 cused us of lacking daring. Is not our very presence 
 on this mountain sufficient proof of heroism? At any 
 moment we may be attacked and cut to pieces. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 Take care; you will frighten them. 
 
 LE BREUX 
 [Shrugging his shoulders, glancing at Haineau, and 
 
 continuing: 
 
 We must not use up, on ourselves and among ourselves, the 
 hate that should strike only Oppidomagne. We have 
 now been here together for a week, and already di- 
 visions, jealousies, spite, the hesitation of one, the folly 
 of another, get the better of our mutual understanding, 
 cemented though it was by God knows what promises ! 
 Happily, I have good news for you. The Regency 
 authorises Herenien to treat with us. here on the Aven- 
 tine. [Showing a written paper. 
 
 His letter brings me the announcement. 
 
 THE CROWD (on all sides} 
 Herenien will see clear. It is he who overcomes all our 
 
 troubles. 
 
 He knows what to do. 
 He will give us back to ourselves. 
 
 55
 
 THE DAWN ACT n. sc. n. 
 
 AN OPPONENT 
 Must he always be called on? 
 
 ANOTHER 
 We abandon ourselves to him like women. 
 
 LE BREUX 
 You tempt the people by speaking like that. 
 
 AN OPPONENT 
 We open its eyes ; we put it on its guard against itself. 
 
 LE BREUX 
 
 The crowd adores Herenien. It does not discuss its en- 
 thusiasms. 
 
 AN OPPONENT 
 
 Herenien is not a God. Why did he leave Oppidomagne 
 on the night of the revolt? 
 
 LE BREUX 
 His father was dying. 
 
 AN OPPONENT 
 
 His leaving was a mask for his flight. Herenien pays. you 
 to defend him. 
 
 LE BREUX 
 
 If I was in his pay, you would have been in mine long ago. 
 You have a little low soul which cannot understand 
 a higher one than your own. 
 
 [Acclamations. 
 56
 
 ACT ii. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 SOMEONE 
 Let us wait for Herenien. 
 
 A YOUNG MAN 
 I will follow him, but I will kill him if he betrays us. 
 
 LE BREUX 
 
 I answer for him, as you answer for yourself to yourself. 
 We need Herenien. We are sure of him. Look 
 yonder. (There is a movement near the gate of the 
 cemetery.) He is coming. It is only he who is strong 
 enough to unite us and save us. 
 
 [The crowd masses itself on the boundary wall. 
 Long cheering. Herenien mounts rapidly on a 
 tomb, and speaks, keeping his eye on Haineau, who 
 is in front of him. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 At last I am with you ! You and I are only half alive, 
 when we live apart. At the village where my father 
 died I heard of your exodus to this mountain. I 
 thought of Roman times, of the pride, the decisiveness, 
 the courage, the beauty, of the supreme peoples. Let 
 what may come of it, this dazzling and brutal act will 
 have greatened you. You have proved your combined 
 stubbornness and your single valour. Those that re- 
 fuse to you, soldiers, your proper pay, to you, citizens, 
 complete justice, because you were the claimants for 
 it, are to-day checkmated. The means you have used 
 were excellent. But will they remain so? 
 
 An armed conflict with Oppidomagne would be a disaster. 
 
 57
 
 THE DAWX ACT n. sc. n. 
 
 Up to now it has been postponed. Up to now, you 
 have remained bound together in an admirable bond 
 of defence. I affirm, before you all, that you have 
 been proud to live together, thanks to your clear and 
 mutual good-will. You have realized that the future 
 depended upon your attitude. That is well. 
 
 [Silence. All heads are bozved. 
 
 But will this union maintain itself, in the midst of the 
 misery and the famine that will break out here? 
 [General silence. Haineau shrugs his shoulders. 
 
 Hcrcnien gathers that there has been a dispute. 
 
 Suddenly changing his tone: 
 
 You were, I admit, in terrible straits. From the height 
 of this mountain of death, certainly, you dominated 
 those whom you detested. But your hearths and 
 homes were wanting; your wives were wanting, your 
 sons, your daughters. The Regency held them in its 
 grasp, already impatient to crush them out. Ah ! you 
 have suffered the interminable passing of black hours, 
 the long and slow procession of anguish after anguish 
 through the soul ! Happily all may be changed. The 
 Regency offers you peace. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 Never will we parley with the Regents. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 If you refuse to parley, the massacre begins. What! we 
 are a handful of enthusiasts here, whose action will 
 decide the lot of a people ; we are on the eve of an 
 enormous victory for the people, and we consent to 
 die like a rat in a trap. [Cheers. 
 
 58
 
 ACT ii. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 Everything that comes from the Regency must be rejected 
 without consideration. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Everything that it offers must be considered, and used for 
 our own advantage. What matter the danger of the 
 means ! I am a man who would use the thunder itself ! 
 
 [Cheers. 
 HAINEAU 
 We shall be your dupes. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 What do you know of my designs, of my hopes, of my life? 
 You disorganise: I organise. Those who listen to you 
 waste themselves in defiances, in plots, in terrorisings. 
 For a week now you have been using your utmost 
 rigour: you have achieved a nullity, mere disputes. I 
 come and I find your work paltry. I am ashamed of it. 
 
 [ Cheers. 
 HAINEAU 
 I will have no tyrant. [Hooting. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 You would become one, if I let you. [Cheers. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 You overturn the Regency only to usurp its place. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 Its place! I might have taken it: I disdained it. 
 
 [Cheers. 
 59
 
 THE DAWN ACT n. sc. n. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 You consent to the most dubious compromises, you 
 traffic. . . . 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Silence ! Not a word-more ! This debate shall not descend 
 to personal questions. 
 
 [Addressing himself directly to the croivd: 
 I hate the authorities to such a degree that I do not so 
 much as dictate to you the conditions of peace. You 
 yourselves shall impose them upon the Regency. 
 Speak. [Cheers. 
 
 SOMEONE 
 
 We want to be treated as men. We have used our rights 
 in striking for them. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 Perfect. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 We want our goods to be restored to us. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 Promised. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 We want the arrears of wages to be paid to workmen. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 The Regency agrees to it. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 
 We want to re-enter the town under arms. 
 
 60
 
 ACT ii. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 You may. And I add: if confiscations have taken place 
 during your absence, they shall be annulled. All con- 
 demnations shall be forgotten. You yourselves shall be 
 the judges of those who have judged you. 
 
 [Cheers. 
 
 And now that we are in agreement, tell me: would it not 
 have been monstrous that men of the same soil should 
 have cut one another's throats ? Think : yonder, in the 
 feverous streets of the old quarters, in the atmosphere 
 of powder and conflagration, disabled folk have taken 
 refuge, in an immense hope of some renewal. More 
 and more it is our programmes that they discuss, our 
 discourses that they comment on, our soul that they 
 drink in. The army itself is in a ferment with our 
 dreams. Every discontent, every grudge, every in- 
 justice, every oppression, every enslavement, takes an 
 unknown voice to make itself heard ! Our masters 
 hate each other. They have no more strength. They 
 obey a phantom. 
 
 [Acquiescence from all sides. 
 
 Among the enemy, the same confusion, the same weakness. 
 Mutinies break out among the soldiers. There are re- 
 volts against the cruelty of chiefs, against the horrors 
 and follies of the campaign. Storms of hatred arise. 
 Sick of nameless dreads, distresses, and miseries, all 
 along after the necessary union of man with man. 
 They are ashamed to be butchers of their fellows. 
 And now, if this conflagration of instincts could be ex- 
 tinguished ; if our besiegers could be made to feel that 
 they would find brotherly souls among us ; if by a sud- 
 
 61
 
 THE DAWN ACT in. sc. i. 
 
 den understanding we might realise to-day a little of 
 the great human dream, Oppidomagne would be for- 
 given for all its shame, its folly, its blasphemy ; it would 
 become the place in the world where one of the few 
 sacred events had happened. It is with this thought 
 that you must all follow me down, towards your chil- 
 dren. [Cheers. 
 
 THE CROWD 
 
 He is the only one who makes things move. 
 Without him, our cause was lost. 
 
 SOMEONE (speaking directly to Hercnien) 
 
 We will all obey you ; you, you are our master. 
 
 [Cheers. They hoist Hercnien on their shoulders, and 
 carry him towards the city. Le Breux escorts him. 
 All descend. Cries of triumph are heard. 
 
 ACT III 
 
 SCENE I 
 
 A fortnight after. 
 
 Abode of Herenien, the same as in the second act. The work- 
 table, covered with papers, is near the window, in which panes 
 are broken. In the streets, the crowd comes and goes, retires 
 to a distance and returns ; groups cry : " Down with the trai- 
 tor ! " " Death to the traitor ! " " Death to him ! " " Down 
 with him ! " 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 And now this has lasted for a fortnight ! The house seems 
 like a ship in distress. Billows of rage and shouting 
 62
 
 ACT m. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 beat upon it. Oh ! that accursed affair on the Aven- 
 tine! To have fallen all of a sudden from the height 
 of enthusiasm, into disgrace and hate ! 
 
 [Haineau enters rapidly. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 You! here! 
 
 HAINEAU 
 Yes, I. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 What do you want? 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 You don't know then of my speech in the " Old Market " ? 
 I expected a better welcome. 
 
 CLAIRE (pointing to Herenien's room) 
 
 What, you ! his adversary and his enemy ! 
 
 [Pointing to the street. 
 You who stir up those cries and uproars ! 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 By this time, after what he must know, Herenien will re- 
 ceive me better than you, my friend and my sister. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 I do not understand. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 You will understand soon. Meanwhile, tell me, what was 
 he like during these days of vain and miserable rage ? 
 63
 
 THE DAWN ACT m. sc. i. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 Oh, do not think he is overcome! He is still splendidly 
 erect; he is carrying out the boldest of projects: he 
 will reconcile Oppidomagne with the enemy. 
 
 HAINEAU (pointing to the street) 
 But these uproars at his door? 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 At first, it was hard. It was useless for me to espouse 
 his furies, envelop him with my fervour, wait upon him 
 better than ever : he called up all his old grudges, he 
 stirred himself up to anger, he rushed to the window, 
 shook his fist at the city, shouted with rage, and the 
 tears started from his eyes. In all his violence he was 
 the terrible child that you know, 
 
 HAIXEAU 
 
 Ah ! if he had only listened to me, we should never have 
 fallen out. The Regency would not have deceived him. 
 The people would love him still. But he is not to be 
 disciplined : he has never known what it is to will pa- 
 tiently. He goes by bounds and tempests, like the 
 wind of his country. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 And what ought he to have done ? 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 Prolonged the revolt on the Aventine ; extended it instead 
 of reducing it, accepted the civic conflict, made the 
 64
 
 ACT in. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 misery sharper; seized the banks by force; the public 
 services by force; destiny, by force. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 It was impossible. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 Everything was possible, in the state of fever in which we 
 were. But there had to be a plan, a resolution coldly 
 taken and followed. First, we should have organised 
 the resistance : we. were on strike, up yonder ; then the 
 attack ; then the massacre. It was the immediate, 
 definite, urgent things that needed seeing to. Those in 
 authority would have been assassinated : Regent and 
 Consuls. They were beginning to listen to me. 
 Herenien came to the Aventine at an unlucky moment : 
 circumstances were in his favour. He is the senti- 
 mental tribune in speaking, big gestures, big words : he 
 magnetises, he does not convince. Ah! when I think 
 of it, all my hatred comes back to me. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 How you deceive yourself! 
 
 [Clamours in the street. Haineau and Claire pay no 
 heed to them. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 He seems not to know what he wants himself. He always 
 looks beyond the hour. I never understand him. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 I always understand him. 
 
 65
 
 THE DAWN ACT m. sc. i. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 It is a mistake to put all his will into the service of certain 
 dreams. He who blows down the tube too hard breaks 
 the glass. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 Don't let us discuss things. You are violent, and you feel 
 that you are weak and ill at ease. If you are here, in 
 his house, it is to ask for something. What is it? 
 
 HAINEAU (with pride) 
 
 I have come here to tell you that yesterday, I, I who am now 
 speaking, overcame the crowd, defended Herenien, 
 made them cheer him. My tenacity has conquered his 
 ill-luck. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 You have done that, you? But how then does your con- 
 duct go with your ideas ? 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 Ah, it is like this ! When I act for myself, I am a failure, 
 I am betrayed, I am hated, Le Breux supplants me; in 
 short, Herenien, in spite of all, is the only man who 
 can save things, at the point they have reached. He 
 has ravelled them, let him unravel them. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 And you, you have sustained him? 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 Certainly, because we cannot have the revolt over again, 
 because everything crumbles through my fingers, be- 
 66
 
 ACT m. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 cause I have no chance, no luck. If I could only tell 
 you how childish the people are, and how they are 
 already regretting that they have no master ! Oh, it is 
 all over, it is all over! and one ought to have the 
 strength to disappear. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 It is in despair then that you sustain my man? 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 What does it matter? 
 
 [taking his hat and stick and preparing to go. 
 Good-bye, you know now what you ought to know. When 
 Herenien comes down, prepare him to see me. 
 [He goes out. Renewed tempest of howls and cries. 
 Herenien enters. 
 
 CLAIRE (pointing towards the crowd) 
 
 People must be wicked when the best of them become sav- 
 age so soon. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Come, have patience. I am as tenacious as the peasant my 
 father. Yesterday, these cries pursued me through the 
 whole house, they beat against the walls from top to 
 bottom, from cellar to attic, everywhere, like alarm- 
 bells. I felt a rage creeping over me, I would like 
 to have strangled them, stamped them to bits, anni- 
 hilated them. I was in a fever of hate. I answered 
 their nameless rages with insults. To-day, I feel quite 
 firm. (Unfolding a letter.) Listen, this is what has 
 been sent to me : " I can now give you a definite assur- 
 67
 
 THE DAWN ACT in. sc. i. 
 
 ance. All the officers are now won over to our cause 
 and will follow us: some out of spite, others out of 
 envy, all out of disgust. We came to an understand- 
 ing yesterday in a secret meeting. I hold them in my 
 hand. They will obey me like the pen with which I 
 write to you, like the man who carries you this letter. 
 Through them the whole army is ours. The generals? 
 They are too far off, too high ; the soldiers are hardly 
 aware of them: they may be overlooked." (Folding 
 the letter.) And this letter comes to me from Hordain, 
 the captain of the enemy. 
 
 [Fresh outbreak of cries: "Death to him!" "Down 
 with him!" 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 My friend! 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Well, let them cry on! As for that, I foresaw that the 
 Regency, when it promised everything, when it gave 
 up everything, kept the half up its sleeves, like the 
 jugglers in fairs. It was the maddest thing to go to 
 the Aventine ! But I had to have the people, I had to 
 have my people and its fervour, before I could make 
 terms with the besiegers. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 How reasonable you are now ! 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 The Regency fooled me perfectly! Those vacuous and 
 bedizened folk, measuring my ambition by their own, 
 came here, to offer me a block of its ruined power : as 
 68
 
 ACT in. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 if men like me did not conquer their own place, for 
 themselves, in the sight of all. They went out of that 
 door like beaten lackeys, and since then my loss has 
 enfuriated them. They have only a few days more 
 to live, and there is nothing but their rage for my 
 downfall to keep their thoughts from their own death- 
 agony. Ah ! if the people knew ! All the appearances 
 are against me. I believed in a poor scrap of writing, 
 a mere signature, scratched out with the same pen that 
 set it down. The more the Regency has broken its 
 promises, the more I seem to have broken mine. Really, 
 they might believe me a guilty accomplice. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 It is the people that is. You have only been able to deceive 
 them because you were deceived yourself. The inno- 
 cence of all you have done blinds them. Ah! I have 
 my own idea. The masses are as suspicious, as ma- 
 lignant, as ungrateful, as stupid, as those who govern 
 them. They will never admit that anyone can be simply 
 pure and great. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 I forbid you to think that. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 You said it yourself yesterday. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Oh! I, that is different. [Pause.] The people loves me, 
 and I love it, despite all, through all. What is hap- 
 pening now is only a lover's quarrel. 
 
 [Insulting shouts In the street. 
 69
 
 THE DAWN ACT m. sc. i. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 They are there by their thousands insulting us. And those 
 are the same mouths that cheered you ! Ah ! the 
 cowards ! the wretches ! the madmen ! 
 
 [Renewed tempest of cries. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Indeed, one might think they had never known me. 
 
 [Going towards the windoiv with clenched fists: 
 
 Oh ! those brutes ! those brutes ! those brutes ! 
 
 [Then, returning to his desk: 
 
 And yet yesterday, at the meeting in the Old Market, they 
 all cheered me. Haineau defended me with such fer- 
 vour that I forgive him all. Le Breux came to me 
 to-night with the most reassuring news. The duplicity 
 of the Regents is becoming clearer and clearer. All 
 Oppidomagne returns to its true master. My hour 
 has come again. Has it not? (impatiently) Has it 
 not, then? 
 
 CLAIRE 
 There is good hope of it. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 No, no, but there is certainty ! 
 Despite these heady cries, despite their multitude, 
 I can divine already such a flock of hands 
 All bending to my strength, to me, to-morrow ! 
 My past returns again, and fills their minds, 
 In a great flood of memories 
 
 And in a foam of glory. [As if speaking to himself: 
 
 70
 
 ACT in. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 I hold the future fast, in these two hands of mine : 
 
 Those who withstand, 
 
 And those who put their trust in me, 
 
 Deep in their conscience know it, all of them. 
 
 That noble dream which is made flesh in me, 
 
 Now more than ever, spurs me on to live ; 
 
 These are the times and these the hours that fire my soul. 
 
 What are these cries to me, these clamours on the wind, 
 
 And these unterrifying- storms? 
 
 Only the future, in my mind, 
 
 Far stronger and more real than the present, lives ! 
 
 CLAIRE (pointing to the street} 
 
 If they could only see you, how they would be won by 
 your confidence! 
 
 My friend, you make of me 
 
 The proudest woman on earth, 
 
 And I abase myself and lose myself in your great soul; 
 
 Take, take this kiss I give to you, 
 
 Take it, and bear it where you go, 
 
 As a clear shining weapon bear it ! 
 
 There are few men upon the earth 
 
 That ever took 
 
 A deeper and a truer one than this ! 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 If my own self were to forsake me, I should find myself 
 again in you, my force has passed so into your heart! 
 But I am so unshaken in my destiny that nothing 
 which is happening now seems to me real. I believe 
 in surprise, chance, the unknown. (Pointing to the
 
 THE DAWN ACT in. sc. i. 
 
 street.) Let them howl on! they are preparing their 
 repentance. 
 
 [The tumult grows greater. Blows arc heard on 
 the door beloiv. Window-panes are smashed. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 If they go on knocking, I will open. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 It would be mad. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 There have been moments when my mere presence meant 
 victory! Never have I repelled them, when they ap- 
 proached my threshold. 
 
 [Herenien thrusts aside Claire, u'ho tries to stop him, 
 rushes to the window, opens it, and plants himself 
 there with his arms folded. The uproar becomes 
 quieter, then stops, and there is silence. Suddenly, 
 at a distance, other cries are heard: "Down with 
 the Regency! Down with the firebrands! Long 
 live Herenien ! " 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 At last! There is the true people! The people that 
 cheered me at the Old Market! My heart never de- 
 ceived me. It heard when my ears were still deaf. 
 [There is a swaying and jostling in the crowd, con- 
 tradictory outcries, then, slowly, quietude. 
 
 CLAIRE (at the window) 
 
 Le Breux is going to speak. Listen. 
 
 72
 
 ACT in. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 HERENIEN (impatiently} 
 I want to speak myself. 
 
 LE BREUX (in the street) 
 
 Herenien was sincere and just. (Murmurs.) There are 
 five hundred of you howling at him, and there is not 
 one of you whom he has not helped. (Murmurs.) 
 As for me, he extricated me from the very talons of 
 the consular judges. Last year, he battled to deliver 
 Haineau. And you, all of you? he saved you in the 
 time of the tragic and famishing strikes, he. . . . 
 
 HERENIEN (impatiently) 
 
 I have no need of a defender. 
 
 [Addressing Le Breux, who speaks in the street. 
 I must take the people: I must not have them given 
 to me. 
 
 THE CROWD 
 Let him speak. 
 
 Down with him! death to him! He is a traitor! 
 Let him speak ! 
 
 Death to him ! Down with him ! He is bought ! 
 Silence! [Quiet is restored. 
 
 HAINEAU (in the street} 
 
 I, Charles Haineau, suspected Jacques Herenien. He 
 seemed to me a man to be doubted. Like you, I op- 
 posed him. To-day, I regret it. 
 
 THE CROWD (contradictorily') 
 
 Long live Herenien ! Death to him ! Down with him ! 
 
 73
 
 THE DAWN ACT in. sc. i. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 The Regency sent emissaries amongst us : I surprised them 
 yesterday at the meeting in the Old Market : they were 
 urging other wretches to kill Jacques Herenien, to pil- 
 lage his house, to pretend that it was the vengeance 
 of the people. 
 
 THE CROWD 
 
 Death to the Regents! 
 
 Long live the people of Oppidomagne ! 
 
 Long live Herenien ! 
 
 HAINEAU 
 We need Herenien. 
 
 THE CROWD 
 
 Why did he receive dubious messages ? 
 
 Why did he leave our meetings? 
 
 He is a despot. 
 
 He is a martyr. 
 
 Let him defend himself. 
 
 Silence ! 
 
 May he forgive us ! 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Forgive you, yes : for a man .such as I am is not doubted ; 
 for the Regency of Oppidomagne deceives as easily 
 as I take breath. Bit by bit, the fine front of its 
 authority is chipped away; rag by rag the fine cloak 
 of its power falls from its shoulders. It called on 
 me to sew together the pieces. It dispatched me 
 to the Aventine, with the design of monopolising or 
 74
 
 ACT in. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 ruining me. The mission was difficult, dangerous, 
 tempting. I acquitted myself of it as of a duty, and 
 to-day I am neither lost to you nor gained by it ; I am, 
 and I remain, free; as always, I set my strength to 
 serve my supreme idea. (Some cheers.) Just now 
 I heard cries of " Bought ! Bought ! " 
 
 [Turning and seizing a bundle of papers on his desk. 
 " Bought ! " What have they not done that I should 
 not be! (brandishing a roll of papers). In this hand- 
 ful of letters they have promised me everything that 
 infamy can abandon to an apostate, corruption to a 
 traitor. That you may touch and handle the synicism, 
 the policy, the perfidy, the baseness, the blindness of 
 the Regency, I hand over to you their letters. They 
 were all accompanied by pressing demands, they were 
 all the prologue of more ardent solicitations, all of them 
 contain no more than the shadow of the infamies that 
 came out in personal interviews. What they dared 
 not write, they said ; what they dared not endorse, they 
 impressed ; what they dared not formulate, they hinted. 
 They returned to the attack, after each failure ; they 
 answered refusals by bigger offers. Finally, they gave 
 up all pride. I needed but to have opened my hand, 
 to seize the whole power, and personify, in my own 
 person, all the past. Ah ! truly I wonder at myself 
 when I think with what violence this fist remained 
 clenched. 
 
 And now for the letters, read them yourselves. (He throws 
 them to the crowd.) Talk them over, share them 
 amongst you, spread them to the four winds of Op- 
 pidomagne. The immense ruin of the Regency is in 
 
 75
 
 THE DAWN ACT in. sc. i. 
 
 them. You will understand all. As for me, I rest all 
 my security on the insane imprudence of disarming 
 myself ; I am lost, for ever, willingly, joyously, in the 
 eyes of the Consuls ; I offer them the most unforgetta- 
 ble of insults and I take refuge in your justice. Hence- 
 forth, it is you who protect my life. 
 
 [Cries of enthusiasm. 
 
 I may be attacked, on any side. Am I not the shining 
 target, at which all the arrows are aimed? 
 Swear to me then, no matter what the calumny that 
 may be reported, no matter what the fable, foolish 
 or looking like truth, that may be invented swear to 
 follow me, with eyes shut, but with assured heart. 
 (They swear, and cheer.) It should be our joy and our 
 pride to belong to one another, to hate, to love, and to 
 think as one. [Cheers. 
 
 I will be your soul, and you my arms. And together 
 we shall realise such splendid conquests of humanity, 
 that seeing them, thanks to us, living and shining in 
 their very eyes, men shall date time from the day of 
 our victory. 
 
 [Cheers; then calm; Hercnien adds: 
 And now, I request Vincent Le Breux and Charles 
 Haineau to join me here. I wish no faintest differ- 
 ence to exist between us. 
 [Renewed cheers. Hercnien turns and goes up to 
 
 Claire, who embraces him. 
 
 You see now that we should never despair of the peo- 
 ple. (After a silence.} Tell our emissary from Hor- 
 dain to come here immediately. 
 
 [Haineau and Le Breux enter. Claire goes out. 
 
 76
 
 ACT m. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 LE BREUX 
 This is victory! 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 Oh ! you are really a master. When I fight against you I 
 am without force; I am worth a thousand, when I am 
 by your side. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Well, this time at least, our good old Regency seems finally 
 stuck in its own mud. (Sitting douw.} Despite all 
 its promises and oaths, no help was given to the house- 
 hold of any of the revolters. It assigned our men to 
 the most dangerous posts : manipulation of the powder 
 and explosives. The enemy's bombs fell into their 
 midst as they worked. Lists of suspected persons were 
 drawn up : each of the military leaders had his own. 
 
 LE BREUX 
 You must regret your action at the Aventine. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Come now! (Turning sharply to Haineau.) Do you 
 know, Charles Haineau, what I planned out while you 
 were urging these storms of revolt against me? 
 
 HAINEAU 
 Master, believe that all that, my part in it ... 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Do not excuse yourself, do not interrupt; have I not for- 
 gotten everything? Yes, over the heads and the thou- 
 77
 
 THE DAWN ACT in. sc. i. 
 
 sand arms of this now conquered outbreak, I realised the 
 boldest dream of my life, the one for which alone I 
 exist. (Rising suddenly.) In. less than three days the 
 enemy will enter Oppidomagne peacefully and we shall 
 welcome them. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 It is impossible. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 The Regent's men have never ceased tempting me. I have 
 discussed patiently with them, questioning, illusioning 
 them, asking for guarantees and confidences ; giving 
 them hope and taking it from them in turn, worming 
 out all their secrets; opposing, to their senile tactics, 
 my abruptness and my anger. I played with them 
 audaciously, madly ; and I know now, better than any- 
 one, better especially than they themselves, how in- 
 evitable and how close is their ruin. Their treasury? 
 Empty. Their munition? Exhausted. Their gar- 
 ners? Ransacked. No more bread for the siege; no 
 more money for the defence. They are asking in what 
 waste, what orgies, fortunes and public supplies have 
 disappeared. Everyone accuses everybody. 
 
 The army? The day before yesterday five battalions re- 
 fused to march. The ring-leaders were condemned 
 to death. They were led to the place of execution : 
 not a soldier would fire upon them : they are alive yet. 
 [Cheers in the street: "Long lire Hcrcnien!" 
 At the council, the Consuls squabble. Does one pro- 
 pose a plan? his neighbour opposes it, details his own, 
 and wants that to be adopted. A week since, the min- 
 73
 
 ACT in. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 isters decided on a general sortie by the Gate of Rome ; 
 they succeeded in getting it voted : not a Consul would 
 put himself at the head of the troops. 
 
 Each Regent has sent me his emissary : these old men are 
 not even agreed between themselves. They are like 
 poor caged screech-owls, whose perches are turned 
 round. They lose their heads, cry out, and close their 
 eyes against the fire of day. They cast at one another 
 the stupidities, faults, and crimes, for which they are 
 afraid to take the responsibility. " What is to be 
 done ? " becomes the motto of their reign. 
 
 CLAIRE (entering} 
 The emissary has come. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Let him come in. (Turning towards Haineau and Le 
 Breux.) I have shown you the situation as it is among 
 us in the city; you shall judge of what it is like among 
 the enemy. Then you will see that war is no longer 
 possible. 
 
 [Presenting the emissary to Le Breux and Haineau. 
 Here is one I am sure of. He knows, more than any 
 of us, as to the state of mind of both armies. (To the 
 emissary.) Tell them what you have discovered. 
 
 [Herenien walks to and fro in the room. 
 
 THE EMISSARY 
 
 Last Tuesday night my brother was sent to reconnoitre at 
 the outposts. He went on a long way, to find out if 
 the intrenchment that we had bombarded had given 
 79
 
 THE DAWN ACT in. sc. i. 
 
 way, and would give us the chance of a general sortie 
 from the Gate of Rome. 
 
 HERENIEN (interrupting') 
 That is the sortie I told you of. 
 
 THE EMISSARY (continuing} 
 
 All at once, in the dark, a voice calls out, but gently, as 
 if afraid of frightening him and driving him away. 
 A few quick, friendly words are exchanged. He is 
 asked if there are not really in Oppidomagne responsi- 
 ble men who have had enough of the war. 
 
 HERENIEN (quickly) 
 
 That happened two days ago, and since then there have 
 been many similar colloquies. 
 
 THE EMISSARY 
 
 My brother answers that Oppidomagne will defend itself, 
 that the revolt against this mutual slaughter must come, 
 not from the conquered, but from the conquerors. And 
 other soldiers come up, and say the besiegers are tired 
 out, that deserters are endless, that rebellions are break- 
 ing out every day, that there is no longer an army, that 
 they will have to raise the siege, if the frightful epi- 
 demic which decimates the troops continues. They 
 want the union of all the miseries against all the powers. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Well, who then, after such an affirmation of human soli- 
 darity, would dare affirm that the conscience of men 
 remains unchanged? 
 
 80
 
 ACT in. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 O these first trembling confidences that come 
 
 By night, between the perilous dark 
 
 And the terrors of war and its despair ; 
 
 These first confessions of the true soul of man, 
 
 Lucid at last and triumphing, 
 
 The passionless stars 
 
 On high must rejoice to hear them! 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 Truly, I admire you ! At the tiniest glimmer that reaches 
 you through the crack of a door, you are certain of the 
 immense presence of the sun. Since Oppidomagne was 
 blockaded, has a day passed, a single day, without 
 traps being laid for you? Who guarantees you the 
 sincerity of the soldiers? Who tells you that Oppido- 
 magne will open its walls, even to unarmed enemies? 
 You believe everything, like a blind man. The force 
 that animates you is as insensate as it is ardent ! 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 It is the only true one : be in the service of circumstances, 
 hold oneself at the mercy of the immense hope that 
 thrills through the whole world to-day ! 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 You believe then that the enemy will abdicate its victory, 
 and accept peace without profit? 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 You reason without knowledge. The vagabonds and the 
 peasants, who at the beginning of the siege were driven 
 81
 
 THE DAWN ACT in. sc. i. 
 
 back into the country, and who live, God knows how, 
 between the besiegers and us, have given me tidings 
 day by day. Hordain confirms what they have said, 
 and I have checked everything. The bombardment 
 was bound to cease. The epidemic devours the camp: 
 twenty thousand men are dead ; the moats of the en- 
 trenchment overflow with corpses. A general was 
 killed yesterday by a soldier, who had suddenly gone 
 mad. The lower ranks league together to destroy the 
 works of the siege: they spike the cannon, they throw 
 balls and powder into the river. It is thus universal 
 misery, distress, sorrows, tears, rages, terrors, that 
 bring about these hopes of fellowship, these deep and 
 fraternal cries. The very force of things is in accord 
 with ours. 
 
 LE BREUX 
 
 You are wonderful ! You were thought to be overcome, 
 and now you are preparing for a more gigantic enter- 
 prise than ever. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 It is because I have faith, a faith capable of communicating 
 itself to the whole world. I see myself, I feel myself, I 
 multiply myself, in others ; I assimilate them to me. 
 The army of Oppidomagne is in my hands ; that of the 
 enemy obeys Hordain, my disciple and my fanatic. 
 We have both worked with enthusiasm. Of what use 
 is ancient wisdom, prudent, systematic, buried in 
 books? It forms part of the humanity of yesterday; 
 mine dates from to-day. (To the emissary.) 
 
 Go and tell those who will be at the outposts this evening 
 
 82
 
 ACT m. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 that I shall be with them. You will give notice to 
 Hordain. 
 
 [Cheers in the street. The soldier goes out. 
 
 HERENIEN (to Haineau and Le Breux) 
 Will you come with me ? Come, tell me quickly. 
 
 LE BREUX 
 Assuredly. 
 
 HERENIEN (to Haineau) 
 And you? 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 As long as the leaders live, they may do harm. As long 
 as they have arms, they will kill. They will be the 
 reaction which will follow your victory. Suppress 
 them first. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 They will be the past, powerless and annihilated. Come, 
 will you go with me? 
 
 HAINEAU 
 No. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Good, we will do great things without you. 
 
 [Renewed cheering in the street. Hcrcnien leans out 
 of the window, and is cheered. 
 
 LE BREUX (to Haineau) 
 
 He always astonishes me. He sees the obstacle, as you 
 and I do. On what prodigies does he rely to over- 
 83
 
 THE DAWN ACT m. sc. n. 
 
 come it? And how he carries one along in the whirl- 
 wind of his tempest! 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 That man has on his side the unknown forces of life. 
 (After a pause.) I shall go with him, after all. 
 
 SCENE II 
 
 RUINED house. Night, at the outposts. On one side, rising ground 
 and entrenchments ; on the other, the distant walls of Oppi- 
 domagne, faintly lit up. Le Breux is sitting on a heap of stones ; 
 before him an officer of the enemy, and some soldiers. Silent 
 groups arrive. 
 
 LE BREUX 
 
 In Oppidomagne, regents, judges, leading men, all are at 
 the mercy of the people. They are unconscious of the 
 imminence of their defeat, and imagine that they still 
 govern. But what Herenien wishes will come to pass. 
 
 THE OFFICER 
 
 Among us, no one dares punish any more. All the links 
 that bound us to our leaders and to our kings have 
 been snapped. We, the inferiors and the poor, are 
 the masters. To think that after twenty months of 
 campaigning, after taking six provinces, and ten strong- 
 holds, we should collapse before your disorganised 
 capital ! 
 
 LE BREUX 
 
 Will Hordain come? 
 
 84
 
 ACT in. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 THE OFFICER 
 I expect him. 
 
 LE BREUX 
 I am curious to see him. I do not know him. 
 
 THE OFFICER 
 
 He is fifty, he is a mere captain. It was during the dull 
 and stormy winters of our country of ice, in the grey 
 and snowy boredom of a little garrison town, that he 
 won me over to his will and to his faith. He would 
 sit down, at night, at my chimney corner, under my 
 lamp; and we would argue. The works of Herenien 
 had enlightened him ; they were my light. Hordain 
 explained them to me, commented on them, with a 
 conviction so profound, that nothing seemed to me 
 more self-evident in human thought and justice. Ah! 
 those friendly and ardent evenings together! You 
 will never know, you people of Oppidomagne, what 
 miracles can be wrought by a book on the grave, un- 
 satisfied and profound souls of a country of shadow 
 and solitude! 
 
 [Hordain and Herenien arrive almost at the same 
 moment, from opposite directions; they are accom- 
 panied by officers and soldiers. 
 
 HORDAIN 
 
 I come to you, proud to know you. There is not an idea 
 which we do not share. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 I knew by your letters that I could put all my trust in you. 
 Both of us have our lives at stake, both of us love one 
 85
 
 THE DAWN ACT in. sc. n. 
 
 another for the sake of the same profound and mag- 
 nificent idea; 
 
 And what then if they call us traitors? 
 
 Never have we beheld our souls 
 
 More proud, more firm, more masters 
 
 Of all the future. We stand here, 
 
 Hardy and clear, and face to face; 
 
 Do we not bring two nations peace ? 
 
 Do we not work at good with our rebellious hands? 
 
 And conscience cries to us : Well done ! 
 
 HOKDAIN 
 
 Truly, my soul is more peaceful than on a battle-eve! All 
 the words that justify this understanding between us 
 have been said centuries ago. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 If it were miracles we wanted, they would rise on every 
 hand. The air we breathe, the horizons we behold, 
 the fever that beats in our foreheads, the great burning 
 of which each of us is but a flame, foretell the new 
 justice. 
 
 HORDAIN 
 
 My propaganda was incessant. First, absolutely secret. 
 Then, the general watchfulness was relaxed to such a 
 point that my prudence became a mere luxury. Since 
 the Marshal Hardenz, the only real leader we had, fell 
 into disgrace, our army exists no longer. Without un- 
 derstanding anything definite, our soldiers gather what 
 is in the air. An order ! and they would all go towards 
 86
 
 ACT in. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 Oppidomagne, happy, confiding, and fraternal. A 
 number of the dead generals were replaced by cap- 
 tains, of whom some are ours. It is only the very old 
 leaders who seem to me impossible to win over. They 
 would be a danger, if we did not act without delay, 
 sharply, to-morrow. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 How to-morrow? But time to prepare . . . 
 
 HERENIEN 
 We must act like a thunder-clap. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 But still, it is urgent that Oppidomagne should know what 
 we want. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 She guesses it. To-morrow, she shall know it. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 But it is impossible to move thousands of men, to throw 
 open the gates of a city, without taking measures and 
 assuring ourselves of every chance of success. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 All the measures are taken ; all the chances are in my hand. 
 You alone hesitate and tremble; you have no faith, 
 you are afraid to believe. 
 
 HORDAIN 
 
 This then is what I propose: to-morrow, as soon as it be- 
 comes dark, at seven o'clock, those who are here and all 
 87
 
 THE DAWN ACT in. sc. n. 
 
 our friends give orders to their men to march peace- 
 fully towards Oppidomagne. At that moment, all the 
 leaders who remain to us will be assembled to feast 
 their first victory. My brother, with three battalions 
 which are ours, will mount guard over their debauch. 
 The movement of troops will start from the east, and go 
 in the direction both of the gate of Rome and of 
 Babylon : it will reach them in an hour. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 The gate of Rome is too near the Palace and the Regency. 
 The first part of the troops must enter by the gate of 
 Babylon, and spread through the quarters of the people. 
 Ah ! you will see what our people are like, how they 
 will receive you, cheer for you, breathe into you a 
 stormy and courageous soul. You will pass on your 
 way two barracks, the soldiers of which will join yours ; 
 and you will be in the heart of the city while the 
 Regency is still deaf and sleeping. 
 
 Only then will you present yourselves at the gate of Rome. 
 The consternation of our masters and their partisans 
 will be in your favour. Only the five hundred consular 
 guards will remain faithful to them. All the other 
 troops lodged in the Palace will receive you with en- 
 thusiasm. If there is any fighting between the guards 
 and us, leave our men to settle the affair. Keep out of 
 any sort of quarrel. You need not fire a single shot. 
 
 HORDAIN 
 We will do scrupulously what you tell us to do.
 
 ACT in. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 It is only you, the conquerors, who could realise our dream. 
 Revolutions always begin by the renunciation of a 
 privilege: you renounce victory. 
 
 AN OFFICER 
 It was only our King who wanted war. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 Ah, and truly your attack was unjust, your beginning of 
 the campaign . . . 
 
 HORDAIN (interrupting) 
 
 For the last time, let us have things quite clear. My 
 brother will look after the leaders. At eight o'clock 
 three thousand men will enter by the gate of Babylon. 
 Then the gate of Rome opens to let in more battalions. 
 No trumpets, no flags, not a shot fired, no singing. The 
 entry will be sudden, peaceful, and silent. Is that it? 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Perfect ; we will see to the rest. Oppidomagne is ready ; 
 she awaits you. In an hour you will have the whole 
 city yours. 
 
 And now, let us separate; do not leave time for objections 
 to come forward, they are weakening, enervating. Our 
 sole tactics shall be : sudden, and bold ! Till to-morrow, 
 then, yonder! 
 
 [They shake hands and separate. H ordain and 
 Hefenien embrace. 
 
 89
 
 THE DAWN ACT iv. sc. i. 
 
 ACT IV 
 SCENE I 
 
 Abode of Herenien. Same as in first and second acts. The child is 
 playing. Claire stands anxiously at the window. 
 
 THE CHILD 
 What dress shall I put on, Polichinelle? 
 
 CLAIRE 
 The prettiest. 
 
 THE CHILD 
 Is it a holiday ? 
 
 CLAIRE 
 The finest holiday of all. 
 
 THE CHILD 
 Is it Christmas? 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 It is Easter, the real Easter: the first there has ever been 
 in the world. 
 
 THE CHILD 
 May I go, if it is a holiday? 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 It is a holiday for grown-up people; a holiday that chil- 
 dren don't understand. 
 
 90
 
 ACT iv. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 THE CHILD 
 Tell me what it is. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 You will know, one day. You can say then that it is your 
 father, your own father, who made it. 
 
 THE CHILD 
 Will there be lots of flags? 
 
 CLAIRE 
 Lots. 
 
 THE CHILD 
 
 Then why do you say I should not understand? When 
 there are flags, I always understand. 
 
 CLAIRE (from the 'window} 
 At last ! 
 
 [Herenien enters with clothes in disorder. Claire 
 rushes towards him. 
 
 HERENIEN (embracing her feverishly) 
 You know all? 
 
 CLAIRE 
 I guess, without knowing. Tell me. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Things never happen as one imagines they are going to. 
 I was convinced that none of our chiefs would be at 
 the Gate of Babylon : they never are. Yesterday 
 91
 
 THE DAWN ACT iv. sc. i. 
 
 evening, the oldest of them went there. When they 
 saw the enemy at hand, they thought it was an act of 
 sheer madness. It was not an attack : the order of the 
 troops, the absence of commanders, the lack of organi- 
 sation, proved it. It was not parleyers : there were too 
 many. 
 
 When the troops were a hundred yards away, some threw 
 away their arms, others raised the butt ends of their 
 muskets. Without a word, some of our men ran and 
 opened the gates. Our chiefs struggled, shouted, 
 stormed, all together: no one listened to their abuse 
 nor to their orders. All the presentiments they had 
 had, all the fears of defection, of treason, which they 
 dared not admit, must have stabbed and tortured and 
 prostrated them. In a lightning-flash, they understood 
 all. They were surrounded. Three of them were 
 killed : they were brave men. They saw the enemy 
 enter Oppidomagne ; they believed it meant defeat, the 
 shame of the last humiliation. Some wept. Our men 
 flung themselves into the arms of the besiegers. There 
 was hand-shaking, embracing. A sudden joy flashed 
 through the souls of all. Swords, knapsacks, car- 
 tridges were thrown away. The enemy, whose wine- 
 skins were full, offered drink. And the flood, always 
 bigger and bigger, flows on towards the city and the 
 National Square; our chiefs stand there, pale, mute, 
 incredulous. " It is the end of the war," cried Le 
 Breux, in the ear of a commander. " There is neither 
 victory nor defeat: it is holiday." Thereupon the 
 brute began to swear, mad with rage, striking out 
 blindly with his sabre, wounding his horse. Two of 
 
 92
 
 ACT iv. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 his neighbours fled in the midst of the confusion. They 
 went in the direction of the Regency : they will or- 
 ganise perhaps a semblance of resistance, and the con- 
 sular guard will second them. I have already seen 
 their green uniforms roving about near here. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 But the generals of the enemy? 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Oh ! they are the prisoners of their own army. Yester- 
 day, seeing the troops reduced to half by sickness and 
 desertion, they wanted, in their last despair, to make 
 a great assault. The soldiers refused to advance; 
 some of them fired on their leaders. That ended 
 everything. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 I have heard the troops pouring into Oppidomagne ; it is 
 like the sound of the sea. Never was I at once so 
 happy and so trembling. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Twenty thousand men are now in our midst. Tables are 
 set up in the squares. All those who, during the siege, 
 had hidden away victuals in their cellars, distribute 
 them to the people. Haineau said : " Never will Op- 
 pidomagne abase itself to the point of receiving its ene- 
 mies; never will Oppidomagne permit them to walk 
 about its streets and squares; never will the prejudices 
 of humiliated Oppidomagne be effaced." One reasons 
 in that way in normal times : but to-day ! 
 93
 
 THE DAWN ACT iv. sc. i. 
 
 There is such a confusion in accepted ideas that one could 
 found new religions and proclaim new beliefs. Look, 
 up there, on the heights, the Capitol is in flames ! 
 They are burning down the palaces of the Artillery 
 and of the Navy. Before to-night, all the reserves of 
 arms and ammunitions will have been served out. 
 
 During the siege, justice made for itself banks and ex- 
 changes. The hour of doing justice to the fundamental 
 injustice, war, has come in its turn. Only with it will 
 the others disappear too : the hate of the country for the 
 city, of poverty for gold, of distress for power. The 
 organisation of evil has been struck to the heart. 
 (Hurrahs are heard in the street.} Listen: it is the 
 universal human holiday, wild and shouting. 
 [Claire and Herenien go towards the ivindow, and 
 meet in a long embrace. All at once Herenien dis- 
 engages himself sharply. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Dress the child; I came to look for him, so that he might 
 see my work. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 The child? But he will not understand. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Dress him all the same ; I shall say to him, in the presence 
 of a world's death, words that he will never forget. 
 Dress him, that I may take him with me. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 And I? 
 
 94
 
 ACT iv. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 HERENIEN 
 Your brother Haineau will come for you. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 Why can't we all go together? 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Dress the child, I tell you, and be quick. 
 
 [Claire goes out. Herenien looks over his desk, puts 
 some papers in his pocket, then leans -from the win- 
 dow, and harangues the people. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 bitter, shining, and rebellious life 
 
 That I have lived and suffered, how it seems 
 A rest and light and glory to me now ! 
 
 1 feel myself the greater by this conquered world, 
 Drawn from the depths to light, by these mere human 
 
 hands. 
 
 Doubtless it was decreed, a farmer of the plains 
 Should first be born to give me being, me, 
 That hugely, with these fingers and these hands of mine, 
 And with these teeth of mine, should grip the throat of the 
 
 law, 
 
 And bring to ground the ancient pride of bloody powers ! 
 The countryside, from farm to farm, from hut to hut, 
 Died. In the cities where I came 
 The universal will 
 Had fallen on such a depth 
 Of moral carnage : theft, and lechery, and gold, 
 Howled at each other and crushed each other, thronged 
 
 95
 
 THE DAWN ACT iv. sc. i. 
 
 In monstrous hordes of mutual murderous violences. 
 
 All the old instincts killed each other, in the narrow lists 
 
 Of the pot house or the counting-house. 
 
 The formidable and accomplice government 
 
 Drew for its nourishment and for its bane 
 
 The sap of life from those most filthy dunghills, 
 
 And swelled with rotten fulness and content. 
 
 I was the lightning shining at the window 
 
 Where certain stood to watch the portents of the sky ; 
 
 And, less by any skill or any plans of mine 
 
 Than by some unknown wild supremacy of love 
 
 For the whole wide world, I know not from my very self, 
 
 I burst the bolts that held 
 
 The brotherhood of man 
 
 In prison-walls. 
 
 The old Oppidomagne I have cast under me 
 
 Charters, abuses, favours, dogmas, memories 
 
 And see her now arise, the future city of man, 
 
 Forged by the thunderbolt, and wholly mine, 
 
 Who gaze and see the fire of my immortal thought 
 
 And my unconquered folly and ardour realised 
 
 Shine and become the light in the fixed eyes of fate ! 
 
 [Shots are heard. 
 
 CLAIRE (from her room} 
 Herenien, the Regent's soldiers are coming into the street. 
 
 HERENIEN (not hearing, continues} 
 I have made the world again in my own image, 
 I have lifted up the people and their fruitful powers 
 Out of the night of instinct to the vast 
 And clear and radiant threshold of my pride. 
 
 96
 
 ACT iv. sc. i. THE DAWN 
 
 CLAIRE (re-entering) 
 
 Herenien ! Herenien ! Armed men are watching the house. 
 They will kill you, if you go out. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 Come, come! Dress the child. [Renewed firing. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 The shots are coming nearer to the square. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 Dress the child. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 They are spying on you ; they are waiting for you ; they want 
 to take your life. . . . 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 Dress the child. 
 
 [She goes to fetch the child, who trembles, takes it in 
 her arms, and protects it. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 My friend, I beg of you, do not venture out ; wait till they 
 have passed. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 I have no time to wait. To-day I have no fear, either of 
 others or of myself. I have risen to that point of 
 human strength. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 Go then by yourself, and leave me the child. 
 
 97
 
 THE DAWN ACT iv. sc. i. 
 
 HERENIEN (with violence) 
 I want the child. I want him there, by my side. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 He shall come soon. Haineau will bring him to you. 
 
 HERENIEN 
 
 He must be cheered with his father. Give him to me, 
 come, give him to me. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 I have never resisted you. I obey you always, like a slave, 
 but to-day, I entreat you. . . . 
 
 HERENIEN 
 Give him to me, I tell you. 
 
 [He tears the child from the arms of Claire, thrusts 
 her back, and rushes out with him. 
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 My friend! my friend! Oh! that madness! Always his 
 poor, colossal madness ! 
 
 [An immediate sound of firing arrests her. After a 
 moment of frantic anguish, she runs to the window, 
 and leans out, crying: 
 My son ! my son ! 
 
 [Then she rushes into the street. Noise of horses 
 galloping aivay. Tumult. Clamours. A silence. 
 Then, dominating all the others: 
 
 A VOICE 
 
 Jacques Herenien is assassinated! 
 
 98
 
 ACT iv. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 SCENE II 
 
 MORNING. The Place of the People, laid out entirely in terraces. In 
 the background is seen the panorama of Oppidomagne, veiled in 
 the smoke of conflagration. To the right, the statue of the 
 Regency, in full view, on a platform. To the left, the Palace 
 of War is burning. Townspeople deck the windows with flags ; 
 drunken men pass. Wild dances cross the scene ; bands succeed 
 bands. Songs are heard on all sides. Boys throw stones at the 
 statue of the Regency. 
 
 A BEGGAR 
 
 Now then, ragamuffins, look out, you'll have your ears 
 pulled. 
 
 THE BOYS 
 
 We are throwing stones at the Regency, because it's dead. 
 (throwing a stone). Here goes for the sceptre. 
 Here goes for the crown. 
 
 BANDS (surrounding the statue and singing catches) 
 
 And count by four and count by three: 
 
 The men of mettle, who are they ? 
 
 They who reject the soldier's pay, 
 
 To wrest their rights wherever wrongs may be, 
 
 And win their way to liberty. 
 
 And count by three and count by two: 
 The men of mettle, who are they? 
 They are the men whose hearts are gay 
 When cities of gold and fire and fever brew 
 The cup of the wrath of God for you. 
 
 99
 
 THE DAWN ACT iv. sc. n. 
 
 And count by two and count by one: 
 The men of mettle, who are they? 
 They who with one hand's hammer bray 
 To dust the dusty hopes and powers that shun 
 The light of their chief, the light of the sun. 
 
 A PEASANT 
 Hang me if I ever thought to see Oppidomagne again! 
 
 GROUP OF BEGGARS 
 
 I hid myself in a hole, like a beast. 
 
 I took turns in serving both parties. The Oppidomagne 
 people called me the mole: I let them into all the 
 projects of the enemy; and the enemy thought me as 
 subtle as smoke: I kept them posted in the goings on 
 at Oppidomagne. 
 
 We did the same. I worked north. 
 
 And I, west. 
 
 By betraying the both of them, we have ended by settling 
 their differences (ironically). We have made peace. 
 
 A GIPSY 
 
 Isn't there always a moment when what is called crime be- 
 comes virtue? 
 
 A BEGGAR 
 Is it true Herenien is dead? 
 
 THE GIPSY 
 
 He! he is master and king now. People don't die when 
 they are so great as that. 
 
 100
 
 ACT iv. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 A BEGGAR 
 They killed him at his very door. 
 
 THE GIPSY 
 Who did? 
 
 A BEGGAR 
 The Consulars. 
 
 THE GIPSY 
 Impossible ! 
 
 A BEGGAR 
 
 They might well wish him ill ! Never man accomplished 
 so great a work. 
 
 THE GIPSY 
 It is not a man, it is all of us who have done it. 
 
 THE SHEPHERD 
 At last we shall be able to find a living ! 
 
 THE GIPSY 
 
 We! Come now! the soil of humanity would have to be 
 quite differently turned up if the light is to com'e into 
 our holes and corners. Peace or war, 
 
 Still we remain unchanging misery, 
 Nothing avails to us the idle come and go 
 Of sorrow or of joy. 
 Though with new laws Oppidomagne 
 Should this day set its bitted, bridled people free, 
 We only shall remain, God only knows till when, 
 
 101
 
 THE DAWN ACT iv. sc. 11. 
 
 The birds of prey, the wandering birds, 
 That, little piece by piece, tear up the greedy earth, 
 Like crows that rich men frighten from their homes, 
 Chasing them from their thresholds and their orchard- 
 plots, 
 
 Although they give free welcome there 
 To the whole race of birds as free. 
 
 THE SHEPHERD 
 
 You speak as if the Regency still lived. The country will 
 be reborn. The cities are purging themselves. 
 
 THE GIPSY 
 
 Fortunately ! everything is only a going towards something, 
 and to-morrow will always be dissatisfied with to-day. 
 [A troop of drunken women crosses the scene, with 
 torches. They shout: " To the churches! to the 
 churches! Burn down God!" To the beggar: 
 Look at those, there are your allies ! When you and your 
 friends have decided to be really men, come and look 
 for me, as others went and found Herenien. 
 
 (He goes away.) 
 
 GROUP OF WORKMEN 
 
 [Putting up a platform on which to lay the corpse of 
 
 Herenien. They bring the black cloth. 
 This is a bad business if there ever was one. 
 He had two shots there, in the forehead. 
 Was his son killed? 
 No. 
 
 Nobody knows which of the guards were the assassins. 
 They got away. Perhaps we shall never know the 
 1 02
 
 ACT TV. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 name of the abominable coward who killed our tribune. 
 There was fighting, outside the Regency. It took an 
 hour to dislodge the consulars. Herenien was already 
 dead. 
 
 A BE&GAR 
 They say Haineau killed him. 
 
 A WORKMAN 
 
 Haineau? You don't know what you are talking about! 
 Haineau! why he is more distressed about it than we 
 are. 
 
 A BEGGAR 
 He was his enemy. 
 
 THE WORKMAN 
 Be silent; you lie by all the teeth in your jaws. 
 
 THE BEGGAR 
 I say what I was told. 
 
 THE WORKMAN 
 
 It is people like you who start all the foul stories. 
 
 [Enemies and soldiers of Oppidomagne pass along 
 arm in arm; and crowd on the terrace and steps. 
 
 THE CROWD 
 
 Will the holiday come off? 
 
 Why not? It is the new leaders of Oppidomagne who 
 
 ordered it. 
 
 Never did Herenien seem so great as in his death. 
 
 103
 
 THE DAWN ACT iv. sc. n. 
 
 GROUP OF PASSERS 
 
 They carry him through the whole city in triumph. 
 I saw him crossing the Marble Square. There was a 
 
 red wound across his face. 
 And I, I saw him pass the Haven Bridge ; 
 Mothers with lifted arms 
 Held out their little ones to him, 
 So that all young and joyous things 
 That life can offer to a man 
 Hovered and bent above this man in death. 
 
 He passes, garlanded with dedicated flowers; 
 
 The scarlet shroud enfolds him in a light of flames; 
 
 His body : 
 
 A very storm of love, like waves of the sea, 
 
 Billows him high and holds him over all men's heads ; 
 
 Never did king, shining with gold, 
 
 With blood, with murder, and with battles, 
 
 Have at his death 
 
 So glorious and so kingly great a funeral. 
 
 At the Colonnades, a young man made his way up to 
 the litter. He dipped his handkerchief in the blood 
 on the cheeks, and long and fervently, as if he re- 
 ceived the host, he put it to his lips. 
 
 A WORKMAN (who has heard them talking) 
 Jacques Herenien will be laid out here, on this platform, 
 here, in our midst, in all his glory. 
 
 A PEASANT 
 
 It is good for the sun to see him. 
 
 104
 
 ACT iv. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 GROUP OF PASSERS 
 
 Tears, flowers, songs, blood, dances, fire: all conflicting 
 
 ardours burn in the air! 
 
 It is the right atmosphere when new worlds are created. 
 
 [An immense influx; Le Breux, -followed by soldiers 
 
 and workmen, goes upon the step before a house 
 
 and makes sign that he wishes to speak. Silence. 
 
 LE BREUX 
 
 Citizens, in a few moments, you will see in this square of 
 Oppidomagne, dedicated to the people, the body of 
 Jacques Herenien. Receive him as a conqueror. A 
 few shots have been enough to close his eyes, stiffen 
 his arms, immobilise his face, but not to kill him. 
 Jacques Herenien lives still, in his words, in his acts, 
 in his thought, in his books; he is the force which 
 now exalts us ; he wills, thinks, hopes, acts in us. This 
 is not his burial, it is his last victory. Stand back : he 
 comes. 
 [Children climb up on people's shoulders. Enormous 
 
 anxiety in all groups. People get on the windows, 
 
 climb columns. 
 
 DIFFERENT GROUPS ON THE TERRACES 
 
 What a crowd ! The square will never hold them ! 
 How they loved him ! People like that ought never to 
 die. 
 
 GROUP OF WOMEN 
 
 His wife follows the bier. 
 It is she who is carrying the child. 
 
 105
 
 THE DAWN ACT rv. sc. n. 
 
 She is a Christian! 
 
 A Roman! 
 
 Silence ; here is the body. 
 
 [The bier comes forward, and is borne round the 
 
 square; some weep, others-cheer, others fall on their 
 
 knees, some women make the sign of the cross. 
 
 On the terraces, clusters of people squeeze together 
 
 to see better. 
 
 YOUNG MEN 
 
 [Marching before the body. With prayer and ex- 
 ultation. 
 
 Herenien, Herenien, you were our only master! 
 There is not any spark of all my thought 
 You fanned not with your ardour, like a mighty wind. 
 Herenien, Herenien, 'tis you survive in us ! 
 We vow and dedicate to you 
 All that our souls one day 
 
 Shall fashion us of beauty and of strength and light 
 And purity in life! 
 
 Herenien, Herenien, your memory 
 
 Shall be the pulse and heart-beat of the times to come! 
 
 Herenien, Herenien, enliven us 
 
 That we be always thus, these mad and vehement ones, 
 
 That, in ill times, 
 
 Now past, your impulse hurried 
 
 Out of our weak and wandering ways 
 
 Into the whirlwind of your might! 
 
 [The corpse is set down on the platform; women 
 cover the black cloth with flowers. 
 1 06
 
 ACT iv. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 THE SEER 
 
 [Standing on one of the terraces above the crowd. 
 What hour is near? 
 Sounds, not of tears, I hear. 
 This is indeed the hour 
 When, fatal to the gods, thunder has rolled 
 To cast them down, haggard and old, 
 Since sudden truth shines out, in vindicating power ! 
 
 The hope of man is now again made flesh ; 
 
 The old desire, replenished with new flowers, new youth, 
 
 Springs from the earth; now eyes have light and hearts 
 
 have truth, 
 And these magnetic rays bind soul to soul afresh. 
 
 And now with shining palms veil over and hide deep 
 
 This mortuary crape that covers one asleep ; 
 
 And now beware lest you profane 
 
 The worship and the fame 
 
 Of so pure, powerful, and divine a name, 
 
 Or this dead man has died in vain. 
 
 He was in harmony with the new birth 
 That waits the world, and with the stars, and time; 
 He has won life through mortal tumult, mortal crime; 
 He has crushed under him one of the plagues of earth ! 
 
 [Hordain rises in agitation. The crowd point to him 
 and cheer. People tell one another who he is. 
 
 THE CROWD 
 
 It was he who refused to attack Oppidomagne. 
 He won over the enemy. 
 He is as great as Herenien. 
 
 107
 
 THE DAWN ACT iv. sc. n. 
 
 HORDAIN (pointing to the corpse) 
 
 was his disciple, and his unknown friend. His books 
 were my Bible. It is men like this who give birth 
 to men like me, humble, faithful, long obscure, but 
 whom fortune permits, in one overwhelming hour, to 
 realise the supreme dream of their master. If father- 
 lands are fair, sweet to the heart, dear to the memory, 
 armed nations on the frontiers are tragic and deadly; 
 and the whole world is yet bristling with nations. It 
 is in their teeth that we give them this example of 
 our concord. (Cheers.) They will understand some 
 day the immortal thing accomplished here, in this 
 illustrious Oppidomagne, whence the loftiest ideas of 
 humanity have taken flight, one after another, through 
 all the ages. For the first time since the beginning of 
 power, since brains have reckoned time, two races, one 
 renouncing its victory, the other its humbled pride, are 
 made one in an embrace. The whole earth must needs 
 have quivered, all the blood, all the sap of the earth 
 must have flowed to the heart of things. Concord and 
 goodwill have conquered hate. (Cheers.) Human 
 strife, in its form of bloodshed, has been gainsaid. A 
 new beacon shines on the horizon of future storms. Its 
 steady rays shall dazzle all eyes, haunt all brains, mag- 
 netise all desires. Needs must we, after all these trials 
 and sorrows, come at last into port, to whose entrance , 
 it points the way, and where it gilds the tranquil masts 
 and vessels. 
 
 [Enthusiasm of all: the people shout and embrace. 
 The former enemies rise and surround Hordain. 
 Those of Oppidomagne stretch their arms toivards 
 
 1 08
 
 ACT iv. sc. IT. THE DAWN 
 
 him. He disengages himself from them and lays 
 palms at the feet of Herenien. Then turning to-> 
 wards the widow: 
 
 In the name of life and the triumph of life, I demand of 
 you, Claire Herenien, to present to these too exultant 
 people, him who seems to us to be Jacques Herenien 
 himself: his son! (He holds out his arms to present 
 the child.) 
 
 CLAIRE (staying him) 
 
 I want to have strength to do it myself. (She rises). 
 
 Here, in the city's very heart, 
 
 Here, at this moment great with hope, 
 
 Upon this threshold of new days, that bring 
 
 A new beginning to the world; 
 
 Drying my tears, and calling on my will, 
 
 I dare confide to you this child, child of his flesh, 
 
 I dare devote this child to proud, to tragic duty, 
 
 To that chimsera, dazzling and divine, 
 
 His father bridled and broke in and rode. 
 
 I offer him to the future, jubilant in this place 
 
 Of feast and insurrection aureoled, 
 
 Here in this place of joy and sorrow, even here 
 
 Before you all, before the feet of this slain man 
 
 Who was Herenien, and is dead! 
 
 [Claire holds up the child in her arms for some time 
 in the midst of cheers and waving of arms, then 
 passes him to H ordain, and, unable to control her- 
 self any longer, falls sobbing on the corpse. Silence 
 comes slowly. 
 
 109
 
 THE DAWN ACT iv. sc. n. 
 
 LE BREUX 
 
 This hour is too great and too beautiful, it binds us too 
 intimately to each other, for us to think of oaths or 
 terms of peace. In full liberty, in face of all that re- 
 mains, inviolate and sacred, in face of this man of 
 genius, whose murdered body and immortal soul en- 
 fever and inspire us, we give ourselves, each to each, 
 for ever! [Cheers. 
 
 HORDAIN 
 
 Yesterday, when with open hands and hearts we entered the 
 city, I was amazed that he who more than all of us 
 had realised our work should be present, in life, at 
 his triumph. So great a conquest required so great 
 a victim. If you consider under what strange circum- 
 stances Herenien, without escort, without arms, of- 
 fered himself to perhaps the last shot that was fired, 
 you will believe, as I do, that his death is bound up in 
 the mystery of the great and sovereign powers. 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 He broke under him the old power whose image still stands 
 upright. 
 
 [He points to the statue; there are cries: "Pull it 
 down! Pull it down!" Workmen seize crowbars 
 to pull it down, and mount the pedestal. 
 He conquered its spawn, its dastard consuls, its bastard 
 laws, its shameful customs, its paid armies. 
 
 THE CROWD 
 
 Pull it down ! Pull it down ! 
 
 no
 
 ACT iv. sc. ii. THE DAWN 
 
 HAINEAU 
 
 He purged its thieving banks, its treasury, its parliaments 
 and its councils: he slew all antagonisms That image 
 mocks his action. 
 
 [He points to the statue. 
 
 THE CROWD 
 Oh ! the old brute ! 
 Luckless doll ! 
 Horrible drab! 
 
 ON ALL SIDES 
 Pull it down ! Pull it down ! 
 
 THE CROWD 
 
 Throw it into the sewers ! 
 Break it ! Smash it to pieces ! 
 Pull it down ! Pull it down ! 
 
 SOMEONE FROM THE FIELDS 
 It was that that devoured us ! 
 
 SOMEONE FROM THE CITIES 
 It was that that blighted us ! 
 
 SOMEONE FROM THE FIELDS 
 It was death ! 
 
 SOMEONE FROM THE CITIES 
 
 It was crime! 
 
 in
 
 THE DAWN ACT iv. sc. n. 
 
 ON ALL SIDES 
 Pull it down ! Pull it down ! 
 
 A WORKMAN (from the pedestal, to those around} 
 
 Look out : it is going to fall, it is going to fall ! 
 
 [In the midst of outcries of hate the huge statue tot- 
 ters and falls. There is immediate silence. Then 
 Haineau seizes the head, ivhich remains intact, and, 
 staggering under its colossal weight, Hings it and 
 breaks it, without a word, at the feet of Hcrcnicn. 
 
 THE SEER 
 Now let the Dawn arise ! 
 
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