As he walked through the streets Godefroid felt himself another man.
Whoever could have looked into his being would have admired the curious phenomenon of the communication of collective power.He was no longer a mere man, he was a tenfold force, knowing himself the representative of persons whose united forces upheld his actions and walked beside him.Bearing that power in his heart, he felt within him a plenitude of life, a noble might, which uplifted him.It was, as he afterwards said, one of the finest moments of his whole existence; he was conscious of a new sense, an omnipotence more sure than that of despots.Moral power is, like thought, limitless.
"To live for others," he thought, "to act with others, all as one, and act alone as all together, to have for leader Charity, the noblest, the most living of those ideal figures Christianity has made for us, this is indeed to live!--Come, come, repress that petty joy, which father Alain laughed at.And yet, how singular it is that in seeking to set myself aside from life I have found the power I have sought so long! Yes, the world of misery will belong to me!"