fying nothing whatever to Grantaire.
He smiled at them. Scepticism, that caries of the intelligence, had not left him a single whole idea.
He lived with irony.
This was his axiom: "There is but one certainty, my full glass."
He sneered at all devotion in all parties, the father as well as the brother, Robespierre junior as well as Loizerolles.
"They are greatly in advance to be dead," he exclaimed.
He said of the crucifix:
"There is a gibbet which has been a success."
A rover, a gambler, a libertine, often drunk, he displeased these young dreamers by humming incessantly: "J''aimons les filles, et j''aimons le bon vin."
Air:
Vive Henri IV.
However, this sceptic had one fanaticism.
This fanaticism was neither a dogma, nor an idea, nor an art, nor a science; it was a man:
Enjolras.
Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. To whom did this anarchical scoffer unite himself in this phalanx of absolute minds?
To the most absolute.
In what manner had Enjolras subjugated him?
By his ideas?
No. By his character. A phenomenon which is often observable.
A sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors.
That which we lack attracts us.
No one loves the light like the blind man. The dwarf adores the drum-major. The toad always has his eyes fixed on heaven.