Page:The Anarchists - A Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/20

 vidual man, on the corpses of millions of unnamed. forgotten ones, rises living and admired.

As if goaded by this thought, Carrard Auban passed on. Leaving behind him the stony arches at the end of the bridge,—the remains of the old Hungerford Suspension Bridge,—he looked down and walked faster. Again as always he lived in the thoughts to which he also had dedicated the youth of his life, and again he was impressed by the boundless grandeur of this movement which the second half of the nineteenth century has named the "social": to carry the light where darkness still prevails—among the toiling, oppressed masses whose sufferings and slow death give life to "the others."

But when Auban had descended the steps of the bridge and found himself in Villiers Street, that remarkable little street which leads from the Strand down past the city station of Charing Cross, he became again fascinated by the bustling life around him. Incessantly it was surging past him: this one wanted to catch the train which had just discharged those who were hurrying towards the Strand—belated theatre-goers who had perhaps again miscalculated the distances of London; here a prostitute was talking at a gentleman with a silk hat, whom she had enticed hither by a word and a look of her weary eyes, in order to come to an agreement with him concerning the "price"; and there a crowd of hungry street urchins were pushing their dirty faces against the window panes of an Italian waffle-baker, greedily following every movement of the untiring worker. Auban saw everything: he had the same attention of a practised eye for the ten-year-old youngster who was seeking to beg a penny of the passers-by by turning wheels before them on the moist pavement, and for the debased features of the fellow who, when he came to a halt, instantly obtruded himself on him and tried to talk him into buying the latest number of the "Matrimonial News"