human
These are our potential Troppmanns, said Gaston Cremieux, as we passed through the grounds of the riding-school.
gpt
We must not blame them too much. It is partly our fault. We have taken their religion from them, and they have not yet enough moral sense to balance the loss. They have learned at our meetings and conferences that they have not come to their own, and they want to break their way to immediate wealth and independence by the stroke of their own hands. All they can see is that the rich have pleasures from which they are shut out--wine, women, and feasting chiefly. This orgy of their imaginations heats the blood so that the younger of them have come to think such things the only good. The schoolmasters also are to blame. They have not instructed them in noble thoughts and duties. The Church which has let them slip without effort is to blame. But we of the liberating societies are most to blame, for we have given them nothing to replace the Catechism they learned, and the mystic trappings of that religion in which we have taught them not to believe. Hence they are our Troppmanns in haste to be rich, on edge to taste every sort of forbidden fruit, and in order to reach their pleasure they are ready to slaughter men, women, and little children with as much cold-bloodedness as did the murderer of the Kinck family at Pantin.