ng itself into syllogisms arrayed against Enjolras, when all of
a sudden, they heard some one singing on the stairs as he went. It was
Combeferre, and this is what he was singing:--

"Si Cesar m'avait donne[25]
La gloire et la guerre,
Et qu'il me fallait quitter
L'amour de ma mere,
Je dirais au grand Cesar:
Reprends ton sceptre et ton char,
J'aime mieux ma mere, o gue!
J'aime mieux ma mere!"

The wild and tender accents with which Combeferre sang communicated to
this couplet a sort of strange grandeur. Marius, thoughtfully, and
with his eyes diked on the ceiling, repeated almost mechanically: "My
mother?--"

At that moment, he felt Enjolras' hand on his shoulder.

"Citizen," said Enjolras to him, "my mother is the Republic."

CHAPTER VI--RES ANGUSTA

That evening left Marius profoundly shaken, and with a melancholy shadow
in his soul. He felt what the earth may possibly feel, at the moment
when it is torn open with the iron, in order that grain may be deposited
within it; it feels only the wound; the quiver of the germ and the joy
of the fruit only arrive later.

Marius was gloomy. He had but just acquired a faith; must he then reject
it already? He affirmed to himself that he would not. He declared to
himself that he would not doubt, and he began to doubt in spite of
himself. To stand between two religions, from one of which you have
not as yet emerged, and another into which you have not yet entered, is
intolerable; and twilight is pleasing only to bat-like souls. Marius
was clear-eyed, and he required the true light. The half-lights of doubt
pained him. Whatever may have been his desire to remain where he was,
he could not halt there, he was irresistibly constrained to continue, to
advance, to examine, to think, to march further. Whither would this lead
him? He feared, after having taken so many steps which had brought him
nearer to his father, to now take a step which should estrange him from
that father. His discomfort was augmented by all the reflections which
occurred to him. An escarpment rose around him. He was in accord neither
with his grandfather nor with his friends; daring in the eyes of
the one, he was behind the times in the eyes of the others, and he
recognized the fact that he was doubly isolated, on the side of age and
on the side of youth. He ceased to go to