atchcocked chickens at Mother Sauget's, excellent matelotes
at the Barriere de la Cunette, and a certain thin white wine at the
Barriere du Com pat. He knew the best place for everything; in
addition, boxing and foot-fencing and some dances; and he was a thorough
single-stick player. He was a tremendous drinker to boot. He was
inordinately homely: the prettiest boot-stitcher of that day, Irma
Boissy, enraged with his homeliness, pronounced sentence on him as
follows: "Grantaire is impossible"; but Grantaire's fatuity was not to
be disconcerted. He stared tenderly and fixedly at all women, with the
air of saying to them all: "If I only chose!" and of trying to make his
comrades believe that he was in general demand.

All those words: rights of the people, rights of man, the social
contract, the French Revolution, the Republic, democracy, humanity,
civilization, religion, progress, came very near to signifying 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. Why? In order to watch the bird in
its flight. Grantaire, in whom writhed doubt, loved to watch faith
soar in Enjolras. He had need of Enjolras. That chaste, healthy, firm,
upright, hard, candid nature charmed him, without his being clearly