All these young men, who differed so greatly, and of whom, after all, we must speak seriously, had the same religion,--Progress. They were all the direct sons of the French Revolution, and the lightest among them became serious when pronouncing the date of '89. Their fathers in the flesh were, or had been, _feuilleants_, royalists, or doctrinaires, but that was of little consequence; this pell-mell, anterior to themselves, who were young, did not concern them, and the pure blood of principles flowed in their veins; they attached themselves, without any intermediate tinge, to incorruptible right and absolute duty. Confederates and initiated, they secretly sketched the ideal. Amid all these impassioned hearts and convinced minds there was a sceptic. How did he get there? Through juxtaposition. The name of this sceptic was Grantaire, and he usually wrote it after the manner of a rebus: R--(Grand R., i. e. Grantaire). Grantaire was a man who carefully avoided believing in anything; he was, however, one of these students who had learned the most during a Parisian residence. He knew that the best coffee was at Lemblier's, and the best billiard-table at the Café Voltaire; that excellent cakes and agreeable girls could be found at the Hermitage on the Boulevard du Maine, spatch-cocks at Mother Saquet's, excellent matelottes at the Barrière de la Cunette, and a peculiar white wine at the Barrière du Combat. Besides all this, he was a mighty drinker. He was abominably ugly, and Irma Boissy, the prettiest boot-stitcher of that day, in her indignation at his ugliness, passed the verdict,--"Grantaire is impossible." But Grantaire's fatuity was not disconcerted by this. He looked tenderly and fixedly at every woman, and assumed an expression of "If I only liked!" and he tried to make his companions believe that he was in general request with the sex. All such words as rights of the people, rights of man, the social contract, the French Revolution, republic, democracy, humanity, civilization, progress, had as good as no meaning with Grantaire, and he smiled at them. Scepticism, that curse of the intellect, had not left him one whole idea in his mind. He lived in irony, and his axiom was, "There is only one thing certain, my full glass." He ridiculed every act of devotion in every party,--the brother as much as the father, young Robespierre as heartily as Loizerolles. "They made great progress by dying," he would exclaim; and would say of the crucifix, "There is a gallows which was successful." Idler, gambler, libertine, and often intoxicated, he annoyed these young democrats by incessantly singing, "_J'aimons les filles et j'aimons le bon vin_" to the tune of "Long live Henri IV."