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said Courfeyrac to Feuilly. ‘That torch flickering in the wind
annoyed me. It had the appearance of being afraid. The light
of torches resembles the wisdom of cowards; it gives a bad
light because it trembles.’
Dawn awakens minds as it does the birds; all began to
talk.
Joly, perceiving a cat prowling on a gutter, extracted phi-
losophy from it.
‘What is the cat?’ he exclaimed. ‘It is a corrective. The
good God, having made the mouse, said: ‘Hullo! I have
committed a blunder.’ And so he made the cat. The cat is
the erratum of the mouse. The mouse, plus the cat, is the
proof of creation revised and corrected.’
Combeferre, surrounded by students and artisans, was
speaking of the dead, of Jean Prouvaire, of Bahorel, of
Mabeuf, and even of Cabuc, and of Enjolras’ sad severity.
He said:—
‘Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus, Chereas, Stepha-
nus, Cromwell, Charlotte Corday, Sand, have all had their
moment of agony when it was too late. Our hearts quiver
so, and human life is such a mystery that, even in the case
of a civic murder, even in a murder for liberation, if there be
such a thing, the remorse for having struck a man surpasses
the joy of having served the human race.’
And, such are the windings of the exchange of speech,
that, a moment later, by a transition brought about through
Jean Prouvaire’s verses, Combeferre was comparing the
translators of the Georgics, Raux with Cournand, Cour-
nand with Delille, pointing out the passages translated by