Les Misérables v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic Read online

  CHAPTER I.

  WELL CUT OUT.

  1831 and 1832, the two years immediately attached to the revolutionof July, contain the most peculiar and striking moments of history;and these two years, amid those that precede and follow them, standout like mountains. They possess the true revolutionary grandeur, andprecipices may be traced in them. The social masses, the foundations ofcivilization, the solid group of superimposed and adherent interests,and the secular profiles of the ancient Gallic formations, appear anddisappear every moment through the stormy clouds of systems, passions,and theories. These apparitions and disappearances were calledresistance and movement, but at intervals truth, the daylight of thehuman soul, flashes through all.

  This remarkable epoch is so circumscribed, and is beginning to becomeso remote from us, that we are able to seize its principal outlines. Wewill make the attempt. The Restoration was one of those intermediatephases which are so difficult to define, in which are fatigue, buzzing,murmurs, sleep, and tumult, and which, after all, are nought butthe arrival of a great nation at a halting-place. These epochs arepeculiar, and deceive the politician who tries to take advantage ofthem. At the outset the nation only demands repose; there is but onethirst, for peace, and only one ambition, to be small,--which is thetranslation of keeping quiet. "Great events, great accidents, greatadventures, great men,--O Lord! we have had enough of these, and morethan enough." Cæsar would be given for Prusias, and Napoleon for theRoi d'Yvetôt, who was "such a merry little king." Folk have beenmarching since daybreak and arrive at the evening of a long and roughjourney; they made their first halt with Mirabeau, the second withRobespierre, and the third with Napoleon, and they are exhausted.Everybody insists on a bed.

  Worn-out devotions, crying heroisms, gorged ambitions, and madefortunes, seek, claim, implore, and solicit,--what? A resting-place,and they have it. They take possession of peace, tranquillity, andleisure, and feel satisfied. Still, at the same time certain factsarise, demand recognition, and knock at doors on their side. Thesefacts have emerged from revolutions and wars; they exist, they live,and have the right,--the right of installing themselves in society,which they do; and in the majority of instances facts are thequarter-masters that only prepare a billet for principles.

  In such a case, this is what occurs to political philosophers: atthe same time as wearied men claim rest, accomplished facts demandguarantees, for guarantees for facts are the same thing as repose formen. It is this that England asked of the Stuart after the Protector,and what France asked of the Bourbons after the Empire. Theseguarantees are a necessity of the times, and they must be granted.The Princes concede them, but in reality it is the force of thingsthat gives them. This is a profound truth and worth knowing, which theStuarts did not suspect in 1662, and of which the Bourbons did not evengain a glimpse in 1814.

  The predestined family which returned to France when Napoleon collapsedhad the fatal simplicity of believing that it gave, and that it couldtake back what it had once given; that the Bourbon family possessedthe right divine, and France possessed nothing, and that the politicalright conceded in the charter of Louis XVIII. was nothing else buta branch of the divine right, detached by the House of Bourbon andgraciously permitted to the people up to the day when the king thoughtproper to clutch it again. Still, from the displeasure which the giftcaused it, the Bourbon family ought to have felt that it did notemanate from it. It behaved in a grudging way to the 19th century, andlooked with an ugly smile at every expansion of the nation. To employ atrivial, that is to say, a popular and true phrase, it was crabbed, andthe people noticed it.

  The Government believed that it had strength because the Empire hadbeen removed before it, like a stage scene; but it did not perceivethat it had been produced in the same way, nor see that it was heldin the same hand which had removed Napoleon. It believed that it hadroots, because it was the past, and was mistaken: it formed a portionof the past, but the whole of the past was France; and the roots ofFrench society were not in the Bourbons, but in the nation. Theseobscure and tenacious roots did not constitute the right of a family,but the history of a people, and were everywhere, except under thethrone. The House of Bourbon had been for France the illustrious andblood-stained knot of her history, but was no longer the principalelement of her destiny or the necessary basis of her policy. She coulddo without the Bourbons as she had done for two-and-twenty years:there was a solution of continuity, but they did not suspect it. Andhow could they suspect it, when they imagined that Louis XVII. reignedat the 9th Thermidor, and that Louis XVIII. was reigning at the dayof Marengo? Never, since the origin of history, have princes beenso blind in the presence of history and that portion of the divineauthority which facts contain and promulgate. Never had the netherclaim, which is called the right of kings, denied to such a conditionthe supreme right. It was a capital error that led this family tolay their hand again on the "granted" guarantees in 1814, or on theconcessions, as they entitled them. It is a sad thing that what theycalled their concessions were our conquests, and what they calledour encroachments were our rights. When the hour appeared to havearrived, the Restoration, supposing itself victorious over Bonaparte,and rooted in the country, that is to say, believing itself strong andprofound, suddenly made up its mind, and risked its stake. One morningit rose in the face of France, and, raising its voice, contested thecollective title, and the individual title, the sovereignty of thenation, and the liberty of the citizen. In other terms, it denied thenation what made it a nation, and the citizen what made him a citizen.This is the substratum of those famous decrees which are called the"Ordonnances" of July. The Restoration fell, and fell justly. Still,let us add, it was not absolutely hostile to all the forms of progress,and grand things were accomplished while it stood aloof. During theRestoration the nation had grown accustomed to calm discussion, whichthe Republic had been deficient in, and to grandeur in peace, whichwas not known under the Empire. France, strong and free, had been anencouraging example for the other nations of Europe. Under Robespierrethe Revolution ruled; under Bonaparte, cannon; while in the reigns ofLouis XVIII. and Charles X. the turn arrived for intellect to speak.The wind ceased, and the torch was re-illumined, while a pure mentallight played round the serene crests. It was a magnificent, useful, anddelightful spectacle; and for fifteen years those great principles,which are so old for the thinker, so new for the statesman,--equalitybefore the law, liberty of conscience, freedom of the press andspeech, and the accessibility of all fitting men to office,--could beseen at work in a reign of peace, and publicly. Things went on thustill 1830, and the Bourbons were an instrument of civilization whichbroke in the hands of Providence.

  The fall of the Bourbons was full of grandeur, not on their side,but on that of the nation. They left the throne with gravity, butwithout authority; their descent into night was not one of thosesolemn disappearances which impart a sombre emotion to history, and itwas neither the spectral calmness of Charles I. nor the eagle cry ofNapoleon. They went away, that was all; they deposited the crown anddid not retain the glory, and though they were dignified, they werenot august, and they were to a certain extent false to the majestyof their misfortune. Charles X., having a round table cut squareduring the Cherbourg voyage, seemed more anxious about the imperilledetiquette than the crumbling monarchy. This diminution saddened thedevoted men who were attached to the Bourbons personally, and theserious men who honored their race. The people behaved admirably,however, and the nation, attacked one morning by a species of royalistinsurrection, felt themselves so strong that they displayed no anger.They defended themselves, restrained themselves, and restored things totheir place; the government in the law, the Bourbons in exile, alas!and stopped there. They took the old King Charles X. off the daïswhich had sheltered Louis XIV., and gently placed him on the ground,and they only touched the royal persons cautiously and sorrowfully.It was not one man, or a few men, but France, united France, Francevictorious, and intoxicated by its victory, which appeared toremember, and practised in the eyes
of the whole world, the seriousremarks of Guillaume du Vair after the day of the Barricades. "It iseasy for those who have been accustomed to obtain the favors of thegreat, and leap like a bird from branch to branch, from a low to aflourishing fortune, to show themselves bold against their prince inhis misfortunes; but for my part the fortune of my kings will be evervenerable to me, and principally of those who are in affliction." TheBourbons bore away with them respect, but not regret; as we have said,their misfortune was greater than themselves, and they faded away onthe horizon.

  The revolution of July at once found friends and enemies in the wholeworld; the former rushed toward it enthusiastically and joyfully, whilethe latter turned away, each according to its nature. The princesof Europe, the owls of this dawn, at the first moment closed theireyes, which were hurt and stupefied, and only opened them again tomenace,--it is a terror easy to understand and a pardonable anger.This strange revolution had scarcely required a blow, and had noteven done conquered royalty the honor of treating it as an enemy andshedding its blood. In the sight of despotic governments which alsohave an interest in liberty calumniating itself, the revolution ofJuly had the fault of being formidable and remaining gentle, but noattempt was made or prepared against it. The most dissatisfied andirritated persons saluted it; for whatever their selfishness or rancormay be, men feel a mysterious respect issue from events in which theyfeel the co-operation of some one who labors higher than man. Therevolution of July is the triumph of right overthrowing fact, and isa thing full of splendor. Hence came the brilliancy of the revolutionof 1830, and at the same time their mildness, for right that triumphshas no need to be violent. Right is justice and truth, and it is theproperty of right to remain eternally beautiful and pure. Fact, eventhe most necessary in appearance and best accepted by contemporaries,if it only exist as fact, and contain too little right, is no right atall, and is infallibly destined to become, with the duration of time,misshapen, foul, and perhaps even monstrous. If we wish to discover atone glance what a degree of ugliness fact can attain, when looked atthrough the distance of centuries, let us regard Machiavelli. He isnot an evil genius, a demon, or a cowardly and servile writer: he isnothing but the fact, and not merely the Italian fact, but the Europeanfact, the fact of the sixteenth century. He appears hideous, and is soin the presence of the moral idea of the 19th century. This strugglebetween right and fact has endured since the origin of societies. It isthe task of wise men to terminate the duel, amalgamate the pure ideawith human reality, and to make right penetrate fact and fact rightpacifically.