Corneille's heroes
or with those of hooligans and apaches?

"And for all that, mind you," Bertrand went on, "there is one figure
that has risen above the war and will blaze with the beauty and
strength of his courage--"

I listened, leaning on a stick and towards him, drinking in the voice
that came in the twilight silence from the lips that so rarely spoke.
He cried with a clear voice--"Liebknecht!"

He stood up with his arms still crossed. His face, as profoundly
serious as a statue's, drooped upon his chest. But he emerged once
again from his marble muteness to repeat, "The future, the future! The
work of the future will be to wipe out the present, to wipe it out more
than we can imagine, to wipe it out like something abominable and
shameful. And yet--this present--it had to be, it had to be! Shame on
military glory, shame on armies, shame on the soldier's calling, that
changes men by turns into stupid victims or ignoble brutes. Yes, shame.
That's the true word, but it's too true; it's true in eternity, but
it's not yet true for us. It will be true when there is a Bible that is
entirely true, when it is found written among the other truths that a
purified mind will at the same time let us understand. We are still
lost, still exiled far from that time. In our time of to-day, in these
moments, this truth is hardly more than a fallacy, this sacred saying
is only blasphemy!"

A kind of laugh came from him, full of echoing dreams--"To think I once
told them I believed in prophecies, just to kid them!"

I sat down by Bertrand's side. This soldier who had always done more
than was required of him and survived notwithstanding, stood at that
moment in my eyes for those who incarnate a lofty moral conception, who
have the strength to detach themselves from the hustle of
circumstances, and who are destined, however little their path may run
through a splendor of events, to dominate their time.

"I have always thought all those things," I murmured.

"Ah!" said Bertrand. We looked at each other without a word, with a
little surprised self-communion. After this full silence he spoke
again. "It's time to start duty; take your rifle and come."

* * * * *

From our listening-post we see towards the east a light spreading like
a conflagration, but bluer and sadder than buildings on fire. It
streaks the sky above a long black cloud which extends suspended like
the smoke of an extinguished fire, like