cross-fire of antithesis, had at first transported them into the
fulness of epic glory; gesticulating, watching the sun decline behind
some ruins, seeing life pass by amidst all the superb but false
glitter of a fifth act. Then Musset had come to unman them with his
passion and his tears; they heard their own hearts throb in response
to his, a new world opened to them--a world more human--that conquered
them by its cries for pity, and of eternal misery, which henceforth
they were to hear rising from all things. Besides, they were not
difficult to please; they showed the voracity of youth, a furious
appetite for all kinds of literature, good and bad alike. So eager
were they to admire something, that often the most execrable works
threw them into a state of exaltation similar to that which the purest
masterpieces produce.

And as Sandoz now remarked, it was their great love of bodily
exercise, their very revels of literature that had protected them
against the numbing influence of their ordinary surroundings. They
never entered a cafe, they had a horror of the streets, even
pretending to moult in them like caged eagles, whereas their
schoolfellows were already rubbing their elbows over the small marble
tables and playing at cards for drinks. Provincial life, which dragged
other lads, when still young, within its cogged mechanism, that habit
of going to one's club, of spelling out the local paper from its
heading to the last advertisement, the everlasting game of dominoes no
sooner finished than renewed, the same walk at the self-same hour and
ever along the same roads--all that brutifies the mind, like a
grindstone crushing the brain, filled them with indignation, called
forth their protestations. They preferred to scale the neighbouring
hills in search of some unknown solitary spot, where they declaimed
verses even amidst drenching showers, without dreaming of shelter in