Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/134

"Comrades!"

The crowd was breathless. No one moved. Not a muscle twitched. But the senses were alert to miss not a single word the speaker would utter, not a single intonation or gesture. Every word went straight to the hearts and minds of the listeners, like an arrow, perfectly aimed. They were hardly aware of the perspiration pouring down their bodies, how their knees trembled, how their throats were parched. Transfixed in their places they waited for the magic words that had never been spoken before.

It was only when the phrases began to repeat themselves that a nervous shudder seemed to go through the tense crowd. A strange feeling of dissatisfaction spread over the hall. Why was the speaker being so restrained and disciplined? They felt the future dancing in them in final triumph, and he was quoting statistics, balancing family budgets, tossing about the small coins of petty hopes, of piddling gains. In whose name was he speaking? Whom did he represent? Or had he simply failed to sense the might of the giant before him, to understand the mounting fever?

But how was it possible to be unaware of this tenseness? Was he under-estimating the responsibility of a leader? To represent the people! That was no small matter, to be disposed of with a good-natured smile, or an idle wave of the hand.

The meeting was ended. The collective giant stretched his limbs and went on about his affairs. People hurried away, each to his own private little world, his own nothingness, flung back upon himself, lost in the void of being. Dust. Dust motes carried on the wind. One here another there. And if one of the motes should land in somebody's eye, it would redden for a moment, and then it would be as though the speck had never existed. Nothing, nothing at all.