50
PARTISAN REVIEW
"And Julian Green," added Chuck Smith.
"What time is it?" asked Mrs. Soules.
"Eleven o'clock," said Morton Brooks, fingering a cheap
fat watch.
"I'm tempted to go home and forget about this awful
execution," said Mrs. Soules.
"Only five or six hours to go, and Jacques and Art here
haven't even got their barricades built," said Soules.
"I wonder how a man would feel knowing in six hours his
head will be cut off," said Alvin.
"If
you knew, you'd be able to state just how contemporary
capitalistic civilization and its rulers should feel," said Reynolds.
"It seems to me they ought at least to do it in private," said
Mrs. Soules.
"It's the mob. They like blood. Damn the people
I"
"Well Sorel, some day the people will start their own damn–
ing," said Hirschmann.
"I know it. Let them. I'll fight, and they can kill me. I
wash my hands of it," Sorel said.
"All I hope is that before that happens I get my Negro
church going and can give the niggers some gaudy Russian wed–
dings," said Jack Soules.
"I'm beginning to get afraid. I'm afraid to see it happen,"
said Mrs. Soules.
"Oh come along. It's a prelude to the future," said Rey–
nolds.
"It's all a dirty shambles," said Sorel.
"Well, the future comes. So pick your side,'' said Reynolds.
They talked on, and drank wine, and yawned. And then
they talked, and drank coffee, and yawned. Toward dawn they
tiredly went out and walked in the chill to the
Boulevard Arago,
and joined the packed and milling crowd. They could not under–
stand why the scaffolding was not being erected, and they looked
at the excited groups of disappointed talkers, the
poules,
the
caped policemen. They learned with a feeling of morbid disap–
pointment that the victim had been pardoned, because of the
fact that there was a new President of France. The crowd dis–
persed. The group that had talked all night went home their
separate ways, as a cold gray curtain draped Paris, and the early
sun began slowly to cut it like a dull knife to open a new day.
The busses rumbled. The Metro started running again. The
