The good must be innocent，he repeated incessantly.And in fact，if the grandeur of the Revolution consists in keeping 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 future in the same confidence，and blamed the Revolution for having caused the fall of a royal head，that of Andre Chenier.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 grandeur，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，AEschylus，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 contemplated.
All day long，he buried himself in social questions，salary，capital，credit，marriage，religion，liberty of thought，education，penal servitude，poverty，association，property，production and sharing，the enigma of this lower world which covers the human ant-hill with darkness；and at night，he gazed upon the planets，those enormous beings.Like Enjolras，he was wealthy and an only son.
He spoke softly，bowed his head，lowered his eyes，smiled with embarrassment，dressed badly，had an awkward air，blushed at a mere nothing，and was very timid.
Yet he was intrepid.
Feuilly was a workingman，a fan-maker，orphaned both of father and mother，who earned with difficulty three francs a day，and had but one thought，to deliver the world.
He had one other preoccupation，to educate himself；he called this also，delivering himself.He had taught himself to read and write；everything that he knew，he had learned by himself.
Feuilly had a generous heart.
The range of his embrace was immense.
This orphan had adopted the peoples.As his mother had failed him，he meditated on his country.He brooded with the profound divination of the man of the people，over what we now call the idea of the nationality，had learned history with the express object of raging with full knowledge of the case.In this club of young Utopians，occupied chiefly with France，he represented the outside world.
He had for his specialty Greece，Poland，Hungary，Roumania，Italy.
He uttered these names incessantly，appropriately and inappropriately，with the tenacity of right.The violations of Turkey on Greece and Thessaly，of Russia on Warsaw，of Austria on Venice，enraged him.
Above all things，the great violence of 1772 aroused him.
There is no more sovereign eloquence than the true in indignation；he was eloquent with that eloquence.
He was inexhaustible on that infamous date of 1772，on the subject of that noble and valiant race suppressed by treason，and that three-sided crime，on that monstrous ambush，the prototype and pattern of all those horrible suppressions of states，which，since that time，have struck many a noble nation，and have annulled their certificate of birth，so to speak.All contemporary social crimes have their origin in the partition of Poland.
The partition of Poland is a theorem of which all present political outrages are the corollaries.
There has not been a despot，nor a traitor for nearly a century back，who has not signed，approved，counter-signed，and copied，ne variatur，the partition of Poland.When the record of modern treasons was examined，that was the first thing which made its appearance.
The congress of Vienna consulted that crime before consummating its own.
1772 sounded the onset；1815 was the death of the game.
Such was Feuilly's habitual text.This poor workingman had constituted himself the tutor of Justice，and she recompensed him by rendering him great.
The fact is，that there is eternity in right.
Warsaw can no more be Tartar than Venice can be Teuton.
Kings lose their pains and their honor in the attempt to make them so.
Sooner or later，the submerged part floats to the surface and reappears.
Greece becomes Greece again，Italy is once more Italy.
The protest of right against the deed persists forever.
The theft of a nation cannot be allowed by prescription.
These lofty deeds of rascality have no future.A nation cannot have its mark extracted like a pocket handkerchief.
Courfeyrac had a father who was called M.de Courfeyrac.
One of the false ideas of the bourgeoisie under the Restoration as regards aristocracy and the nobility was to believe in the particle.The particle，as every one knows，possesses no significance.But the bourgeois of the epoch of la Minerve estimated so highly that poor de，that they thought themselves bound to abdicate it.M.de Chauvelin had himself called M.Chauvelin；M.de Caumartin，M.Caumartin；M.de Constant de Robecque，Benjamin Constant；M.de Lafayette，M.Lafayette.
Courfeyrac had not wished to remain behind the rest，and called himself plain Courfeyrac.
We might almost，so far as Courfeyrac is concerned，stop here，and confine ourselves to saying with regard to what remains：'For Courfeyrac，see Tholomyes.'
