Edmond Dantès
the threshing floor is swept before the blast; but, with an
undisciplined mob, as he contemptuously called the masses, he would have
moved not a step. The larger the multitude, the less effective and the
more impossible to manage he would have deemed it. A revolution
accomplished by means of the three arms of the military
service--artillery, cavalry and infantry--horse, foot and dragoons, he
could readily conceive; but a revolution conducted to a successful issue
only by means of pikes, axes, muskets and barricades, never, to the hour
of his death, despite the victory of the Three Days, could Carrel
comprehend."
"Besides," said Flocon, "it must not be forgotten that Armand Carrel,
though a most devoted friend to Republicanism, was never a member of the
Societe des Droits de l'Homme--was never, as we all now are--a
Communist, a Socialist, a Fourierist, a friend to the laborer. No
wonder he hoped so little for the people, and trusted to accomplish so
little through them."
"There can be no doubt that the social principle which Republicanism is
now unconsciously assuming all over France," mildly remarked Louis
Blanc, "is lending to the cause incalculable strength. How terribly
impressed with a conviction of the justice of the cause in which they
perished must have been the unhappy insurgents of Lyons, when, with this
motto on their banner: 'To live toiling or die fighting,' they marched
firmly up to the cannon's mouth and fought, and, thus fighting, fell.
Yet this conviction is not peculiar to the workmen of Lyons. It pervades
all Paris, all France, and needs only to be roused to act with an energy
which no human power can resist. Social Republican will be the type of
the next revolution in France--it must be. The French people have been
dazzled by the mirage of liberty ever since '89,--but it has been only a
mirage. On the last three days of July, '30, the people of Paris drove
out one Bourbon to enthrone another. True, 'The State is myself,' was
not the despotic motto he assumed, as did one of his successors, but it
was 'Me and my family,' which has proved equally selfish, if not so
absolute, and far more dangerous to freedom. With Lafayette and Benjamin
Constant, the Citizen King they had made, quarreled as soon as on his
throne, and Lafitte and Dupont de l'Eure, his supporters, were banished
from the Court. Casimir Perier was called to crush the Liberals. Armand
Carrel assailed the act, and urged a republic. 'Le National' was
prosecuted, and insurrections followed. Thus was the Revolution of the
Three Days won by the people to be seized and enjoyed by the
Bourgeoisie. The next revolution will be won by the people, too, but the
people will enjoy it!"
"And how progresses our principles, Louis, among the people?" asked
Marrast, who had listened attentively to every word that had been
uttered.
"Never so gloriously as now, Armand, never! Never has there been such a
diffusion of information upon the subject of the rights of labor as now.
Pagnerre tells me every day that volumes, tracts and pamphlets on this
topic disappear like magic from his shelves."
"Has not the Minister a hand in this mysterious disappearance of
Communist literature?" asked Rollin. "We all know he is quite frantic on
the topic of popular education."
"Oh! yes, we all understand Guizot's love for the people! His system of
education promulgated in 1833 was so very beautiful that it was almost a
pity it was utterly impracticable. But Guizot has very little to do with
Pagnerre's book-shelves, or with Pagnerre in any way, except to
prosecute him from time to time for publishing Cormenin's withering
tracts designed for the Minister himself, and yet it would almost seem
there was a design to exhaust the market of the publications of our
friends; only the great mass of them go to the provinces and large
quantities abroad. My own little brochure, 'The Organization of Work,'
after having fallen stillborn from the press, died a natural death and
been laid out in state for a year or two on Pagnerre's shelves, all at
once is resurrected, runs through half a dozen large editions, and is
translated into half a dozen languages. The same is true of Lamartine's
'Vision of the Future,' and the same of Cormenin's tracts, and of the
ten thousand brochures on this same subject of Communism in all its
different shades and phrases, and in every variety of size, form and
style of writing and appearance. These publications are adapted to every
taste and comprehension. The workman is suited as well as the savant.
All this savors of magic. Even my most sanguine anticipations are
surpassed by reality. There will never long lack a supply for a demand,
be that demand what it may. A demand for Fourier literature has turned
all the pens in Paris hard at work upon it--novelists, essayists,
pamphleteers--while the Porte St. Antoine, the Porte St. Martin and all
the minor theatres, where are found the masses, swarm with melodramas,
farces and vaudevilles on the same subject, and none of you have
forgotten the powerful play, entitled 'The Laborer of Lyons,' attributed
to M. Dantes, recently produced with such success on the boards of the
Francais itself."
"And who is this M. Dantes," asked Ledru Rollin, "if you will suffer me
to interrupt?"
"Decidedly the most remarkable man in the French Chamber of Deputies,"
replied Marrast. "In powers of natural eloquence I never saw his rival."
"Nor is that all," added Louis Blanc. "Unlike most men noted as mere
orators, he is a sound logician, as well as a polished rhetorician. As a
political economist he has few equals. To that subject he seems to have
devoted much study, while his familiarity with the political history of
France and of the times generally all over Christendom seems boundless.
In debate, you observe he is never at a loss for fact or argument, let
the discussion take what direction it may."
"And he has celebrity also as a writer, has he not?" asked Ledru Rollin.
"The author of 'The Laborer of Lyons' must be a man of distinguished
literary genius," was the reply.
"Better than all," said Flocon, "he is devoted heart and soul to the
good cause."
"Such devotedness to a cause I never witnessed," said Marrast. "He puts
us all to the blush. With him it appears a matter of direct individual
interest. He is perfectly untiring. He is like one impelled by his fate.
Love or vengeance could not force onward a man to the attainment of an
object more irresistibly than he seems forced, and that, too, without
the slightest apparent stain of personal interest or ambition. That man
appears to me a miracle--a pure philanthropist. He strives, struggles,
suffers, sacrifices, and all with the sole object of ameliorating the
condition of his race."
"It is, indeed, wonderful," said Rollin, thoughtfully. "Do you know,
Marrast, anything of his past history?"
"Little, if anything. Of himself he never speaks, and I can gather
nothing from others. Even his constituents had known nothing of him but
a few months before he became their representative in the Chamber. His
popularity with them he owes to his efforts to ameliorate their
condition. At his own expense he established among them a Phalanstrie,
which is now in most successful operation."
"He is rich, then?" asked Flocon.
"Seemingly not, to judge from his habits of life," replied Marrast. "Not
a man in the Chamber is more Republican in garb, manner, equipage or
residence than he, and yet he may be rich."
"Is he married?" asked Rollin.
"He has been, I am told," said Marrast. "But we interrupt you, Louis.
You were alluding to the unusual influences now at work for our cause."
"I was about speaking of the newspaper press," said Louis Blanc. "Never
has there been known such a revolution in favor of Reform and Communist
journals, and to none is this better known than to some of ourselves.
There's Flocon's new journal, 'La Reforme,' that has leaped at once into
a circulation never before achieved but by long years of toil and
enterprise. The old 'National,' we need but to look around us to be
sure, was never more prosperous than now, while I am free to confess
that my journal, 'Le Bon Sens,' which has been a sickly child ever since
its birth, has, within three months, tripled its number of readers, or,
at least, its payers. The same is in the main true of 'Le Monde,' by La
Croix, 'Le Journal du Peuple,' by Dubose, 'Le Courier Francais,' by
Chatelain, 'La Commerce,' by Bert, 'La Minerve,' by Lemaine, 'La
Presse,' by Girardin, and all the journals in Paris which diffuse true
ideas upon labor and the rights of the people, be they in other respects
what they may. Even the 'Charivari,' which views the old King and his
Ministers as fair butts of ridicule, perceives a marked increase in its
patronage since it commenced that course, which sudden popularity
naturally excites it to increase of zeal in the same path. Besides all
this, an army of new papers, aiming to aid the great cause, have not
only sprung up of late, like mushrooms, in Paris, but all over France,
and even all over Europe; and so far appear they from interfering with
each other's prospects that the more there are the better they seem
sustained and the more ably conducted. A swarm of new and unknown
writers for the press on this great subject seems all at once to have
appeared from unseen hiding-places."
"This is very strange, Louis," said Marrast, "and yet it is, doubtless,
very true. I had observed what you remark myself, although I have viewed
the movement less hopefully for the cause of the Republic than you."
"Depend upon it, Armand," said Louis Blanc, smiling, "that
Republicanism and Socialism are identical terms, as much so as Communism
and despotism are antagonistic terms."
"But how do you account for this wonderful change, this unprecedented
fever for Fourierism?" asked Flocon.
"I don't pretend to account for it at all. The merits of the cause have,
perhaps, begun to be properly appreciated. Unusual efforts have been
made by our friends of late. Whole nations and epochs are sometimes
seized with a contagious mania for peculiar species of literature, as
for everything else. But I will hint to you a suspicion which I have
recently entertained, namely, that, after all, the rapid sale and ready
market for every species of Fourier literature is not an unerring
indication of the amount of reading of such literature, or the demand
that actually exists of buyers as well as readers--individual ones at
least. As for the journalistic literature, that I have learned is,
without doubt, gratuitously distributed, to a great extent, among the
masses."
"But can the masses read the papers?" asked Marrast.
"Each family, house, neighborhood, cafe or cabaret, at any rate, has, at
least one reader," said Rollin; "and all the men, women and children
have ears to hear, if not power to comprehend. But some of these papers,
which I have seen, come down in style to the very humblest
comprehension."
"Can it be," asked Flocon, "that there is such a club as a society for
the diffusion of social knowledge in Paris, after the form of that in
London, instituted by Lord Henry Brougham and his Whig coadjutors, for
the diffusion of general information, and so opposed by the Tories."
"If there be such an association," said Louis Blanc, "it has managed to
elude all my vigilance thus far, and that of the Government, too, for
Guizot can perceive, if no one else can, the inevitable effect of all
this, and he has no idea that the dear people of France shall be
educated by any one save himself. But, actually, there seems to me to
exist too much unity of purpose and action in this enterprise for it to
be the work of an association. I should rather suppose one powerful and