Grantaire

グランテール

Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe anything. He was, moreover, one of the students who had learned most during their course in Paris; ...[he] knew the good places for everything; furthermore, boxing, tennis, a few dances, and he was a profound cudgel-player. A great drinker to boot. He was frightfully ugly; the prettiest shoe-binder of that period, Irma Boissy, revolting at his ugliness, had uttered this sentence: "Grantaire is impossible," but Grantaire's self-conceit was not disconcerted. He looked tenderly and fixedly upon every woman, appearing to say of them all: 'if I only would'; and trying to make his comrades believe that he was in general demand. All these words: rights of the people, rights of man, social contract, French Revolution, republic, democracy, humanity, civilization, religion, progress, were, to Grantaire, very nearly meaningless. He smiled at them. Skepticism... had not left one entire idea in his mind. He lived in irony. This was his axiom: There is only one certainty, my full glass. He ridiculed all devotion, under all circumstances... He said of the cross: "There is a gibbet which has made a success.&quo