He had books sent to him, and his ill-digested reading still further excited his brain, especially a medical book entitled L'Hygiéne du mineur, in which a Belgian doctor had summed up the evils of which the people in coal mines were dying; without counting treatises on political economy, incomprehensible in their technical dryness, Anarchist pamphlets which upset his ideas, and old numbers of newspapers which he preserved as irrefutable arguments for possible discussions.
Il se fit envoyer des livres, dont la lecture mal digérée acheva de l'exalter: un livre de médecine surtout, _l'Hygiene du mineur, ou un docteur belge avait résumé les maux dont se meurt le peuple des houilleres; sans compter des traités d'économie politique d'une aridité technique incompréhensible, des brochures anarchistes qui le bouleversaient, d'anciens numéros de journaux qu'il gardait ensuite comme des arguments irréfutables, dans des discussions possibles.