which had started long before the Revolution happened, and acts of sabotage
causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people. After confessing to
these things they had been pardoned, reinstated in the Party, and given
posts which were in fact sinecures but which sounded important. All three
had written long, abject articles in the Times, analysing the reasons for
their defection and promising to make amends.
Some time after their release Winston had actually seen all three of
them in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. He remembered the sort of terrified
fascination with which he had watched them out of the corner of his eye.
They were men far older than himself, relics of the ancient world, almost
the last great figures left over from the heroic days of the Party. The
glamour of the underground struggle and the civil war still faintly clung
to them. He had the feeling, though already at that time facts and dates
were growing blurry, that he had known their names years earlier than he
had known that of Big Brother. But also they were outlaws, enemies,
untouchables, doomed with absolute certainty to extinction with