Through nearly closed eyelids however I saw Gabord enter. Doltaire
stood in the doorway watching as the soldier knelt and lifted my arm
to take off the bloody scarf. His manner was imperturbable as ever.
Even then I wondered what his thoughts were, what pungent phrase
he was suiting to the time and to me. I do not know to this day
which more interested him--that very pungency of phrase, or the
critical events which inspired his reflections. He had no sense of
responsibility; his mind loved talent, skill, and cleverness, and
though it was scathing of all usual ethics, for the crude, honest
life of the poor it had sympathy. I remember remarks of his in the
market-place a year before, as he and I watched the peasant in his
sabots and the good-wife in her homespun cloth.
"These are they," said he, "who will save the earth one day, for
they are like it, kin to it. When they are born they lie close to
it, and when they die they fall no height to reach their graves. The
rest--the world--are like ourselves in dreams: we do not walk; we
think we fly, over houses, over trees, over mountains; and then one
blessed instant the spring breaks, or the dream gets twisted, and we
go falling, falling, in a sickening fear, and, waking up, we find we
are and have been on the earth all the while, and yet can make no
claim on it, and have no kin with it, and no right to ask anything
of it--quelle vie--quelle vie!"
Sick as I was, I thought of that as he stood there, looking in at
me; and though I knew I ought to hate him, I admired him in spite
of all.
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