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and bedraggled vagrants dozed, snoring in harmony with the music of the passing street cars. Coffee houses opened. Holiday-bound excursionists pedalled by on their bicycles, rucksacks tied to their backs, girls perched on the handlebars.

"What do you think, Berger? Will the demonstration be a success?" Pierre asked.

"It has to be," Morris snapped. "It's no small matter. All groups under one banner at last. The best thing that any of us could have hoped for."

"You're too damned optimistic, old boy," Pierre jibed, shifting the beret on his head. "I don't trust them as much as a broken sou. The Blums and Daladiers-they don't make me exactly enthusiastic. A bunch of demagogues, if you ask me."

"Stop blowing your top," chided Berger. "Rome wasn't built in a day. We've got to give them a chance. Let's cooperate with them. It's no time for belly-aching."

Pierre made no reply. They walked on in silence until they reached the cemetery. They wandered about the ancient tombstones, Berger puffing at his pipe. Pierre lit a cigarette. The smoke seemed to wrap his brain in a fog of mystic musings.

"What meaning has our brief life, compared with the eternity of death?" Pierre said, tracing the faded letters on a tombstone, with a slow finger.

"It isn't death-it's life that's eternal," Morris answered.

"How do you mean?"

Berger smiled. "Take all those anonymous heroes who rest beneath that wall, for example," he explained. "The idea for which they died did not die. It was picked up and carried on by the living."

"Ma foi," blurted Pierre. "Didn't know you were a philosopher."