Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always. – Dante

There were times when Grantaire could not run away anymore, moments where the drink turned the wrong way in his brain, forcing him to abandon his strained gaiety and look at himself in the mirror.

He was alone in the Café Musain that evening, alone in a crowd which was even worse. There was no one with whom he could laugh or exchange sarcastic jokes, no one to pat him on the shoulder and propose a game of dominos, no one to drive away what the popular writers called the spleen and stop him from taking a ride down to Pope's eponymous underworld.

Of course, he could have joined that group of card players nearest to the bar that was raising hell with their roars and curses. Perhaps, on another occasion, he might have done so, but tonight Grantaire was in no mood for cretins. The evening was shaping out to be scarily low. There was a strange desolate feeling building up in his stomach that made him clutch at his glass and empty it all at once. Nothing was wrong, he repeated to himself. Gros chased him out from his atelier, so what? He had means enough to remain in his lodging, drinking and gambling and wasting his life away like any other gentleman about town. There was plenty of company he could find, plenty of ways to divert himself. There was nothing wrong; there were so many others like him in the glorious city of Paris.

Perhaps it was this realization that there wasn't anything wrong that frightened him. Life ought to have been merry and carefree, now that he was out of Toulouse and his father's grasp. It ought to have been so, and still there was this gnawing fear in his chest that made his lungs constrict and his fingers tighten around the bottle. So every day he drank, laughed, scoffed, flirted, shouted sarcastic insults, running away from that feeling, hoping desperately that one of these mornings it'll disappear and he could be a happy profligate in peace.

He was seated near the door and it opening all of a sudden made him stir and look up.

A man had entered the café.

Grantaire looked at him once and everything else became a blur.

He must have drunk more than he realised because it seemed as if the archangel Michael has descended the skies and made an appearance in the humble quartier Saint-Jacques. Grantaire had to blink several times to convince himself that it was in fact a real man. It must have been him that the poets sung their lays about all along - here were golden curls and perfect coral lips and eyes that Grantaire, voluntarily, would have likened to cornflowers instead of sapphires.

Yet somehow his beauty was the least that mattered. There was something about the slender young man that grabbed Grantaire by the collar and refused to let go. He had an aura around him that could only be put on canvas as a halo. His glance swept past Grantaire, taking in the room and the smoke and the rowdy card players, looking at them and through them at the same time, as if these were little more than curls on the edge of a cloud. Whatever he was doing here, it seemed important, really crucial, something beyond the concerns of ordinary mortals.

"Thank you, Combeferre," the man suddenly said. With a jolt Grantaire realised that there was someone else with him. "This will do very well."

Even his voice sounded different, abrupt yet not sharp, melodious like an Olympian lute. He reminded Grantaire of Roman heroes in their original Latin, sparse and austere and fresh, nothing like the pompous dandies of today with their powdered speeches and stale sentiments.

And just for a moment, to take in all that dawn, to breathe in this fresh morning air, made Grantaire feel like an invalid getting up on his feet. For a minute, he felt strong, healthy, clean, as if there had been no drinking and the tightness in his stomach had never reared its ugly head.

That night was the beginning of a story to which there was no end, for eternity went beyond bullets and insignificant little things like death.