Then came upon a world in ruins an anxious youth.  The children were drops of burning blood which had inundated the earth; they were born in the bosom of war, for war.  For fifteen years they had dreamed of the snows of Moscow and of the sun of the Pyramids.

They had not gone beyond their native towns; but had been told that through each gateway of these towns lay the road to a capital of Europe.  They had in their heads a world; they saw the earth, the sky, the streets and the highways; but these were empty, and the bells of parish churches resounded faintly in the distance.

Pale phantoms, shrouded in black robes, slowly traversed the countryside; some knocked at the doors of houses, and, when admitted, drew from their pockets large, well-worn documents with which they evicted the tenants.  From every direction came men still trembling with the fear that had seized them when they had fled twenty years before.  All began to urge their claims, disputing loudly and crying for help; strange that a single death should attract so many buzzards.

The King of France was on his throne, looking here and there to see if he could perchance find a bee [symbol of Napoleon D.W.] in the royal tapestry.  Some men held out their hats, and he gave them money; others extended a crucifix and he kissed it; others contented themselves with pronouncing in his ear great names of powerful families, and he replied to these by inviting them into his grand salle, where the echoes were more sonorous; still others showed him their old cloaks, when they had carefully effaced the bees, and to these he gave new robes.

The children saw all this, thinking that the spirit of Caesar would soon land at Cannes and breathe upon this larva; but the silence was unbroken, and they saw floating in the sky only the paleness of the lily.  When these children spoke of glory, they met the answer: 

“Become priests;” when they spoke of hope, of love, of power, of life:  “Become priests.”

And yet upon the rostrum came a man who held in his hand a contract between king and people.  He began by saying that glory was a beautiful thing, and ambition and war as well; but there was something still more beautiful, and it was called liberty.

The children raised their heads and remembered that thus their grandfathers had spoken.  They remembered having seen in certain obscure corners of the paternal home mysterious busts with long marble hair and a Latin inscription; they remembered how their grandsires shook their heads and spoke of streams of blood more terrible than those of the Empire.  Something in that word liberty made their hearts beat with the memory of a terrible past and the hope of a glorious future.

They trembled at the word; but returning to their homes they encountered in the street three coffins which were being borne to Clamart; within were three young men who had pronounced that word liberty too distinctly.