"Take refuge?" Christophe would say with a laugh. "It is much too good outside. And you, an open-air man, talk of shutting yourself up?"
"Ah!" Georges would reply. "It is not the same thing for body and soul. The mind needs certainty: it needs to think with others, to adhere to the principles admitted by all the men of the time. I envy the men of old days, the men of the classic ages. My friends are right in their desire to restore the order of the past."
"Milksop!" said Christophe. "What have I to do with such disheartened creatures?"
"I am not disheartened," protested Georges indignantly. "None of us is that."
"But you must be," said Christophe, "to be afraid of yourselves. What! You need order and cannot create it for yourselves? You must always be clinging to your great-grandmother's skirts! Dear God! You must walk alone!"
"One must take root," said Georges, proudly echoing one of the pontiffs of the time.
"But do you think the trees need to be shut up in a box to take root? The earth is there for all of us. Plunge your roots into it. Find your own laws. Look to yourself."
"I have no time," said Georges.
"You are afraid," insisted Christophe.
Georges indignantly denied it, but in the end he agreed that he had no taste for examining his inmost soul: he could not understand what pleasure there could be in it: there was the danger of falling over if you looked down into the abyss.