Why did his little speech do so much to revive everyone, and clear the atmosphere of all the bickering and sullenness? Not because of what Despard says, A. thought, but of course because of the kind of person he is. Here’s certainly an uncorrupted man. He doesn’t want us to follow him, he wants to be a sort of catalyst. I can listen to him and fit in, do what he wants me to do, and feel at the same time as free as that first evening of spring, at the freight station, a week ago, with no-one in the whole world knowing where I was, who I was.
- Hans Koning, The Revolutionary: 144
