We found so much pain, that despite our hardened hearts we felt despair, but you, my love, you stood in the face of the Shadow.
I remember you, holding the small crying child, and how beautiful you were, how much hope then rested on your smile.
It was the early summer, already the tide had turned. Soon we would counterattack, and then, we would finish the job, and make sure our children would never cry again in fear.
Évariste Galois
The sum of his written work fits in 60 handwritten pages, arguably one of the great works of the human mind. An undomitable rebel, and determined republican in the age of the Restoration, he failed his examination for the entry to Ecole Polytechique, and was famously expelled from the Ecole Normale, then the two highest churches of French scientific education. His death was probably caused by his friendship with a lady, poetically named Stéphanie-Félicie Poterin du Motel, whose injury he sought to repair, all twenty year-old he was, against an experienced duellist who wounded him mortally with one shot.
On the eve of the duel he wrote to his friend Auguste Chevalier, a long letter which remains his mathematical testament.
On the day, he told his brother Alfred:
“Ne pleures pas, Alfred ! J’ai besoin de tout mon courage pour mourir à vingt ans ! ”
