death coming with a torch in his hand, above the enormous legion of sins, arise this all-conquering power, innocence.
And innocence had been victorious.
And one could say: "No, civil war does not exist; barbarity does not exist; hatred does not exist; crime does not exist; darkness does not exist: this aurora, childhood, is sufficient to scatter all these spectres.
Never, in any struggle, had Satan been more visible nor God.
This battle had had a human conscience for its arena.
The conscience of Lantenac.
Now, it was beginning over again, more furious and still more decisive, perhaps, in another conscience.
The conscience of Gauvain.
What a battle-field is man!
We are slaves to these gods, to these monsters, to these giants,—our thoughts.
Often, these terrible combatants trample our souls under foot.
Gauvain meditated.
The Marquis de Lantenac, surrounded, blockaded, condemned outlawed; held fast, like the wild beast in the circus, like a snail in pincers; shut up in his home, now become his prison; enclosed on all sides by a wall of iron and of fire,—had succeeded in getting away; he had performed a miracle of escape. He had made that masterstroke, the most difficult of all in such a war, flight. He had taken possession of the forest, to intrench himself there; of the country, to fight in it; of the darkness, to disappear in it. He had again become the terrible one, coming and going; the sinister wanderer; the captain of the invisible; the chief of underground men; the master of the woods. Gauvain had the victory; Lantenac had liberty. Lantenac, henceforth, had security, a boundless course before him, an inexhaustible choice of places of refuge. He was intangible, lost to sight, unapproachable. The lion had been taken in a snare, and had escaped from it.
Well, he had returned to it.
The Marquis de Lantenac had voluntarily, spontaneously, of his own free will, left the forest, darkness, security, liberty, to return undauntedly into the most frightful danger.
