"It's so cold outside," Enjolras said, sitting down beside Combeferre. "And I don't normally say that."

Combeferre leaned forward to feel his hands, freezing despite the gloves he had been wearing. "Let's move to the fire," he said. "You don't want to fall ill."

Enjolras smiled. "You always worry about it and it never happens."

"True," Combeferre admitted. "You simply look too delicate to be in perfect health."

"Looks can be deceiving."

"Certainly…"

He trailed off. There were more important things for Enjolras to worry about.

Yet Enjolras, ever perceptive, looked up. "What is it?"

Combeferre sighed. "People are fragile, Enjolras," he finally said. "Much more fragile than you think. In our day and age, it takes so little to kill them."

Enjolras looked into the fire, examining the dancing flames with a familiar otherworldly gaze, as if seeing deep into the clouds of the future. "Poverty and hunger and cold are powerful enemies," he said quietly. "Yet there will come a day when these are no more."

"It has not come yet," Combeferre whispered.

Enjolras looked sharply up. "Not yet. But it will come, one day, that time when all enemies shall be vanquished."

"I do not doubt that."

Now it was Enjolras that took his hand. "What then?"

"Yet in the meantime," Combeferre said, "the enemies survive. We do our best to help the poor, to herald that new age, yet for some it will be too late."

Enjolras looked back to the fire, in his eyes a terrible sadness. "There is only so much that mortals can do. If there was a God, he'd do the rest."

"And it isn't even that three-headed monster," Combeferre continued, "not always. Humans are so fragile, I tell you. Be it you or Bahorel, it matters little. Any moment, an illness might strike, the heart might stop, a cart might appear and crush your skull like a nut. There needs to be progress, Enjolras, so much of it. Right now, we are little more than snowmen, standing defenseless, swept aside or melted by the sun. If you catch a cold, you are already one foot in the grave."

"Surely not?"

"Absolutely," Combeferre said with a sad smile. "That cold may develop into something worse straight off, or weaken you until some other malady strikes, and from there the chances of survival are too small to be worthy of us. We must have progress, quicker than it is happening."

"There will be progress," Enjolras said. "I am sure of it. The nineteenth century will be great, I promise you. Everything is ready for it. There will be such progress as the world has never yet seen, in medicine as in any other field. There shall be struggle and pain and ignorance and hatred and death, yet at the end of it, the human race shall emerge triumphant."

"And we shall be happy?"

"Yes," Enjolras said with a quiet and blissful smile. "The nineteenth century will be great, but the twentieth shall be happy."