bringing home second-hand books lent a colour of veracity.
The first definite indication of his tutelary vocation came to him after a casual encounter with a young poetaster on the terrasse of the Café du Panthéon. It was an afternoon of late spring, in the year 1920. Paul had just heard in the Sorbonne a lecture on Will and its Role in the Universe, and stopped at the café to sip an apéritif. The professor's theory had been incontrovertible. The world was what its inhabitants chose to make it. A world peopled by the pure in heart would revolve morally on its axis: the same world would revolve frivolously at the behest of knaves. Paul fatalistically accepted his status as that of a believer in l'univers moral, despite appalling evidence to the contrary. And the only honourable course was to live up to the belief—to go on, in the face of unromantic fact, performing romantic deeds. Such a course was impractical, foolhardy, catastrophant—to use a word of his own coining—but it might serve to redeem his failures. If only enough men turned angelic, earth would become heaven; and somebody had to make a start.
As he mused, he observed a gaunt young man scribbling at the neighbouring table, in a corner that might once have been occupied by the needy Verlaine. His face was drawn and his grey eyes seemed to envisage defeat. His clothes were threadbare, but he was clean, whereas he obviously belonged in a category of visionaries who, like Verlaine, their prototype, were usually dirty. Paul saw in the youth a promise which was in danger of belying itself, a brittle spirit which life might easily snap. Another example of the wretched species—the creature all wings.
At length the youth set down his pencil and looked away from his bescribbled sheets and empty glass. Paul leaned toward him, addressing him in English.
