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PIERRE AND LUCE
113

position to take. As for searching after the responsibilities, that was merely time lost. When I am forced to fight it gives me a gay outlook, a pretty consolation, to know that I might have not fought—if things had really been . . . what they haven't been!

The responsibilities? Now for Bernard Saisset they were exactly the primordial question; he was obstinate in disentangling that knot of snakes; or rather, like a little Fury, he brandished the snakes above his head. A frail boy, distinguished looking, impassioned, too many nerves, burning with a too lively sensitiveness of the brain, belonging to the wealthy bourgeoisie and an old republican family which had played a part in the highest offices of State, he professed, through reaction, all the ultra-revolutionary passions. He had inspected too near at hand the masters of the day and what they brought forth. He accused all the governments—and by preference his own. He talked of nothing any more but of syndicalists and bolsheviki; he had just made a discovery of them and he fraternized with them,