lectures were going on these papers were circulated; lessons and studies were neglected; we drank our fill of news, shielded by the back of a neighbour. In order to conceal the big sheets we used to cut them in four, and open them inside our books. The professors were not always blind, but they let us go our own way with the tolerance of men resigned to let the idler bear the burden of his idleness.

[Pg 151]

At first, Julien shrugged his shoulders. He was possessed by a fine adoration of the poets of 1830, and there was always a volume of Musset or Hugo in his pocket which he used to read at[Pg 152] lecture. So when anyone handed him a newspaper he used to pass it on scornfully without even condescending to look at it, and would continue reading the poem which he had begun. To him it seemed monstrous that anybody could care about men who were fighting one another. But a catastrophe which changed the whole course of his life caused him to alter his opinion.

[Pg 152]

One fine day Louis, who had just failed in his examination, enlisted. It was a rash step which had long been in his mind. He had an uncle who was a general, and he thought himself sure of making his way without passing through the military schools. Besides, when the war was over, he could still try Saint-Cyr. When Julien heard this news, it came upon him like a thunderbolt. He was no longer the boy declaiming against war with missish arguments, but he still had an unconquerable aversion. He wished to show himself a hardened man; and he succeeded in not shedding tears before us. But from the time his brother went, he became one of the[Pg 153] most eager devourers of newspapers. We came and went from college together; and our conversations turned on nothing but possible battles. I remember that he used to drag me almost every day to the Luxembourg Gardens. He would lay his books on a bench and trace a whole map of Northern Italy in the sand. That kept his thoughts with his brother. In the depths of his heart he was full of terror at the idea that he might be killed.

[Pg 153]

Even now, when I inquire of my memory, I find it difficult to make clear the elements of this horror of war on Julien’s part. He was by no means a coward. He merely had a distaste for bodily exercises, to which he reckoned abstract mental speculations far superior. To live the life of a learned man or a poet, shut into a quiet room, seemed to him the real end of man on this earth; while the turmoils of the street, battles, whether with 

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