this to you too? Don't you see that this man has agreed to go round the Eiffel Tower that was built with the stolen Panama money? Don't you see that in bringing the Eiffel Tower into an experiment that is, anyway, of very doubtful value but that has excited all the faddists of progress and of science, they wished to rehabilitate the Panama Company and Eiffel, and Waldeck-Rousseau, who was their champion? I say to you, I who have not been bought by either cheats or fools, what you see up there is a trick of the Ministry and the Panama Company. That man has stolen right and left: he has stolen from the public secret funds and I, I alone will denounce him."
And, as the balloon disappeared behind the glowing tops of the autumn trees, he cried in a voice that was rather sharp and shrill:
"Panamiste! Panamiste!"
I was pondering over this amazing sequence of ideas and awaiting with some anxiety the reappearance of the poor abused balloon when a "revolutionist" hailed me. He is an authentic, implacable, impeccable revolutionist, one of those whose loyal service to the Revolution can never be brought into question, since they spend precisely the whole of their lives in accusing others of not serving it. Just then the balloon reappeared, struggling against the wind this time, tossed by invisible billows, pitching and plunging, but in spite of all keeping firmly on its way on that uncertain and troublous upper sea. The
