.
. . No more children! Paris was bent on dying. And Mathieu recalled how
Napoleon I., one evening after battle, on beholding a plain strewn with
the corpses of his soldiers, had put his trust in Paris to repair the
carnage of that day. But times had changed. Paris would no longer supply
life, whether it were for slaughter or for toil.
And as Mathieu thought of it all a sudden weakness came upon him. Again
he asked himself whether the Beauchenes, the Moranges, the Seguins, and
all those thousands and thousands around him were not right, and whether
he were not the fool, the dupe, the criminal, with his belief in life
ever renascent, ever growing and spreading throughout the world. And
before him arose, too, the image of Seraphine, the temptress, opening her
perfumed arms to him and carrying him off to the same existence of
pleasure and baseness which the others led.
Then he remembered the three hundred francs which he carried in his
pocket. Three hundred francs, which must last for a whole month, though
out of them he had to pay various little sums that he already owed. The
remainder would barely suffice to buy a ribbon for Marianne and jam for
the youngsters' bread.
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