Affiliated and initiated, they sketched out the ideal underground.^思^兔^在^線^閱^讀^
Among all these glowing hearts and thoroughly convinced minds, there was one sceptic.
How came he there?
By juxtaposition. This sceptic''s name was Grantaire, and he was in the habit of signing himself with this rebus:
R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything.
Moreover, he was one of the students who had learned the most during their course at Paris; he knew that the best coffee was to be had at the Cafe Lemblin, and the best billiards at the Cafe Voltaire, that good cakes and lasses were to be found at the Ermitage, on the Boulevard du Maine, spatchcocked chickens at Mother Sauget''s, excellent matelotes at the Barriere de la Cunette, and a certain thin white wine at the Barriere du Com pat.
He knew the best place for everything; in addition, boxing and foot-fencing and some dances; and he was a thorough single-stick player.
He was a tremendous drinker to boot. He was inordinately homely:
the prettiest boot-stitcher of that day, Irma Boissy, enraged with his homeliness, pronounced sentence on him as follows:
"Grantaire is impossible"; but Grantaire''s fatuity was not to be disconcerted.
He stared tenderly and fixedly at all women, wi