The ox suffers, the cart complains.

The death agony of the barricade was about to begin.For, since the preceding evening, the two rows of houses in the Rue de la Chanvrerie had become two walls; ferocious walls, doors closed, windows closed, shutters closed. A house is an escarpment, a door is a refusal, a facade is a wall. This wall hears, sees and will not. It might open and save you. No. This wall is a judge. It gazes at you and condemns you. What dismal things are closed houses.

How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.

That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.

To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful.

Do you know what friendship is... it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.

Large, heavy, ragged black clouds hung like crape hammocks beneath the starry cope of the night. You would have said that they were the cobwebs of the firmament.