Page 1109 - les-miserables

ing the dazzling ideal fixedly in view, and of soaring thither
athwart the lightnings, with fire and blood in its talons, the
beauty of progress lies in being spotless; and there exists
between Washington, who represents the one, and Danton,
who incarnates the other, that difference which separates
the swan from the angel with the wings of an eagle.
Jean Prouvaire was a still softer shade than Combeferre.
His name was Jehan, owing to that petty momentary freak
which mingled with the powerful and profound movement
whence sprang the very essential study of the Middle Ages.
Jean Prouvaire was in love; he cultivated a pot of flowers,
played on the flute, made verses, loved the people, pitied
woman, wept over the child, confounded God and the fu-
ture in the same confidence, and blamed the Revolution for
having caused the fall of a royal head, that of Andre Che-
nier. His voice was ordinarily delicate, but suddenly grew
manly. He was learned even to erudition, and almost an
Orientalist. Above all, he was good; and, a very simple thing
to those who know how nearly goodness borders on gran-
deur, in the matter of poetry, he preferred the immense. He
knew Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; and these served
him only for the perusal of four poets: Dante, Juvenal, AE-
schylus, and Isaiah. In French, he preferred Corneille to
Racine, and Agrippa d’Aubigne to Corneille. He loved to
saunter through fields of wild oats and corn-flowers, and
busied himself with clouds nearly as much as with events.
His mind had two attitudes, one on the side towards man,
the other on that towards God; he studied or he contem-
plated. All day long, he buried himself in social questions,

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