Tears from Stone
Enjolras felt a tear slide sullenly down his stony cheek as
he surveyed the army gathered before him. Scattered through the ranks, he saw
men whose faces he knew, whose names he had spoken. They were men amongst whom
his mother had set him to play as a child, men with whom he had laughed as a
boy. Until the world had sobered him and he had been able to laugh whimsically
no more.
These were men who only fought because their fathers had been in the army
before them, and indeed, many of their fathers even knew not why this was so.
But it was not for these that he wept. They would understand and forgive him,
just as he forgave them. No, it was those others, the nameless, the faceless,
who drew a tear from this sculpted eye.
For a man known is merely an individual, and thus unimportant. These others
were strangers to him, and it is of strangers that the People is made.