Les Misérables
l’Etoile, the sword-eater of Pœcilus encountered by Apuleius is a
sword-swallower on the Pont-Neuf, the nephew of Rameau and Curculio the
parasite make a pair, Ergasilus could get himself presented to
Cambacères by d’Aigrefeuille; the four dandies of Rome: Alcesimarchus,
Phœdromus, Diabolus, and Argyrippus, descend from Courtille in
Labatut’s posting-chaise; Aulus Gellius would halt no longer in front
of Congrio than would Charles Nodier in front of Punchinello; Marto is
not a tigress, but Pardalisca was not a dragon; Pantolabus the wag
jeers in the Café Anglais at Nomentanus the fast liver, Hermogenus is a
tenor in the Champs-Élysées, and round him, Thracius the beggar, clad
like Bobèche, takes up a collection; the bore who stops you by the
button of your coat in the Tuileries makes you repeat after a lapse of
two thousand years Thesprion’s apostrophe: _Quis properantem me
prehendit pallio? _ The wine on Surêne is a parody of the wine of Alba,
the red border of Desaugiers forms a balance to the great cutting of
Balatro, Père-Lachaise exhales beneath nocturnal rains the same gleams
as the Esquiliæ, and the grave of the poor bought for five years, is
certainly the equivalent of the slave’s hived coffin.
Seek something that Paris has not. The vat of Trophonius contains
nothing that is not in Mesmer’s tub; Ergaphilas lives again in
Cagliostro; the Brahmin Vâsaphantâ become incarnate in the Comte de
Saint-Germain; the cemetery of Saint-Médard works quite as good
miracles as the Mosque of Oumoumié at Damascus.
Paris has an Æsop-Mayeux, and a Canidia, Mademoiselle Lenormand. It is
terrified, like Delphos at the fulgurating realities of the vision; it
makes tables turn as Dodona did tripods. It places the grisette on the
throne, as Rome placed the courtesan there; and, taking it altogether,
if Louis XV. is worse than Claudian, Madame Dubarry is better than
Messalina. Paris combines in an unprecedented type, which has existed
and which we have elbowed, Grecian nudity, the Hebraic ulcer, and the
Gascon pun. It mingles Diogenes, Job, and Jack-pudding, dresses up a
spectre in old numbers of the _Constitutional_, and makes Chodruc
Duclos.
Although Plutarch says: _the tyrant never grows old_, Rome, under Sylla
as under Domitian, resigned itself and willingly put water in its wine.
The Tiber was a Lethe, if the rather doctrinary eulogium made of it by
Varus Vibiscus is to be credited: _Contra Gracchos Tiberim habemus,
Bibere Tiberim, id est seditionem oblivisci_. Paris drinks a million
litres of water a day, but that does not prevent it from occasionally
beating the general alarm and ringing the tocsin.
With that exception, Paris is amiable. It accepts everything royally;
it is not too particular about its Venus; its Callipyge is Hottentot;
provided that it is made to laugh, it condones; ugliness cheers it,
deformity provokes it to laughter, vice diverts it; be eccentric and
you may be an eccentric; even hypocrisy, that supreme cynicism, does
not disgust it; it is so literary that it does not hold its nose before
Basile, and is no more scandalized by the prayer of Tartuffe than
Horace was repelled by the “hiccup” of Priapus. No trait of the
universal face is lacking in the profile of Paris. The bal Mabile is
not the polymnia dance of the Janiculum, but the dealer in ladies’
wearing apparel there devours the lorette with her eyes, exactly as the
procuress Staphyla lay in wait for the virgin Planesium. The Barrière
du Combat is not the Coliseum, but people are as ferocious there as
though Cæsar were looking on. The Syrian hostess has more grace than
Mother Saguet, but, if Virgil haunted the Roman wine-shop, David
d’Angers, Balzac and Charlet have sat at the tables of Parisian
taverns. Paris reigns. Geniuses flash forth there, the red tails
prosper there. Adonaï passes on his chariot with its twelve wheels of
thunder and lightning; Silenus makes his entry there on his ass. For
Silenus read Ramponneau.
Paris is the synonym of Cosmos, Paris is Athens, Sybaris, Jerusalem,
Pantin. All civilizations are there in an abridged form, all barbarisms
also. Paris would greatly regret it if it had not a guillotine.
A little of the Place de Grève is a good thing. What would all that
eternal festival be without this seasoning? Our laws are wisely
provided, and thanks to them, this blade drips on this Shrove Tuesday.
CHAPTER XI—TO SCOFF, TO REIGN
There is no limit to Paris. No city has had that domination which
sometimes derides those whom it subjugates. To please you, O Athenians!
exclaimed Alexander. Paris makes more than the law, it makes the
fashion; Paris sets more than the fashion, it sets the routine. Paris
may be stupid, if it sees fit; it sometimes allows itself this luxury;
then the universe is stupid in company with it; then Paris awakes, rubs
its eyes, says: “How stupid I am!” and bursts out laughing in the face
of the human race. What a marvel is such a city! it is a strange thing
that this grandioseness and this burlesque should be amicable
neighbors, that all this majesty should not be thrown into disorder by
all this parody, and that the same mouth can to-day blow into the trump
of the Judgment Day, and to-morrow into the reed-flute! Paris has a
sovereign joviality. Its gayety is of the thunder and its farce holds a
sceptre.
Its tempest sometimes proceeds from a grimace. Its explosions, its
days, its masterpieces, its prodigies, its epics, go forth to the
bounds of the universe, and so also do its cock-and-bull stories. Its
laugh is the mouth of a volcano which spatters the whole earth. Its
jests are sparks. It imposes its caricatures as well as its ideal on
people; the highest monuments of human civilization accept its ironies
and lend their eternity to its mischievous pranks. It is superb; it has
a prodigious 14th of July, which delivers the globe; it forces all
nations to take the oath of tennis; its night of the 4th of August
dissolves in three hours a thousand years of feudalism; it makes of its
logic the muscle of unanimous will; it multiplies itself under all
sorts of forms of the sublime; it fills with its light Washington,
Kosciusko, Bolivar, Bozzaris, Riego, Bem, Manin, Lopez, John Brown,
Garibaldi; it is everywhere where the future is being lighted up, at
Boston in 1779, at the Isle de Léon in 1820, at Pesth in 1848, at
Palermo in 1860, it whispers the mighty countersign: Liberty, in the
ear of the American abolitionists grouped about the boat at Harper’s
Ferry, and in the ear of the patriots of Ancona assembled in the
shadow, to the Archi before the Gozzi inn on the seashore; it creates
Canaris; it creates Quiroga; it creates Pisacane; it irradiates the
great on earth; it was while proceeding whither its breath urge them,
that Byron perished at Missolonghi, and that Mazet died at Barcelona;
it is the tribune under the feet of Mirabeau, and a crater under the
feet of Robespierre; its books, its theatre, its art, its science, its
literature, its philosophy, are the manuals of the human race; it has
Pascal, Régnier, Corneille, Descartes, Jean-Jacques: Voltaire for all
moments, Molière for all centuries; it makes its language to be talked
by the universal mouth, and that language becomes the word; it
constructs in all minds the idea of progress, the liberating dogmas
which it forges are for the generations trusty friends, and it is with
the soul of its thinkers and its poets that all heroes of all nations
have been made since 1789; this does not prevent vagabondism, and that
enormous genius which is called Paris, while transfiguring the world by
its light, sketches in charcoal Bouginier’s nose on the wall of the
temple of Theseus and writes _Credeville the thief_ on the Pyramids.
Paris is always showing its teeth; when it is not scolding it is
laughing.
Such is Paris. The smoke of its roofs forms the ideas of the universe.
A heap of mud and stone, if you will, but, above all, a moral being. It
is more than great, it is immense. Why? Because it is daring.
To dare; that is the price of progress.
All sublime conquests are, more or less, the prizes of daring. In order
that the Revolution should take place, it does not suffice that
Montesquieu should foresee it, that Diderot should preach it, that
Beaumarchais should announce it, that Condorcet should calculate it,
that Arouet should prepare it, that Rousseau should premeditate it; it
is necessary that Danton should dare it.
The cry: _Audacity! _ is a _Fiat lux_. It is necessary, for the sake of
the forward march of the human race, that there should be proud lessons
of courage permanently on the heights. Daring deeds dazzle history and
are one of man’s great sources of light. The dawn dares when it rises.
To attempt, to brave, to persist, to persevere, to be faithful to one’s
self, to grasp fate bodily, to astound catastrophe by the small amount
of fear that it occasions us, now to affront unjust power, again to
insult drunken victory, to hold one’s position, to stand one’s ground;
that is the example which nations need, that is the light which
electrifies them. The same formidable lightning proceeds from the torch
of Prometheus to Cambronne’s short pipe.
CHAPTER XII—THE FUTURE LATENT IN THE PEOPLE
As for the Parisian populace, even when a man grown, it is always the
street Arab; to paint the child is to paint the city; and it is for
that reason that we have studied this eagle in this arrant sparrow. It
is in the faubourgs, above all, we maintain, that the Parisian race
appears; there is the pure blood; there is the true physiognomy; there
this people toils and suffers, and suffering and toil are the two faces
of man. There exist there immense numbers of unknown beings, among whom
swarm types of the strangest, from the porter of la Râpée to the
knacker of Montfaucon. _Fex urbis_, exclaims Cicero; _mob_, adds Burke,
indignantly; rabble, multitude, populace. These are words and quickly
uttered. But so be it. What does it matter? What is it to me if they do
go barefoot! They do not know how to read; so much the worse. Would you
abandon them for that? Would you turn their distress into a
malediction? Cannot the light penetrate these masses? Let us return to
that cry: Light! and let us obstinately persist therein! Light! Light!
Who knows whether these opacities will not become transparent? Are not
revolutions transfigurations? Come, philosophers, teach, enlighten,
light up, think aloud, speak aloud, hasten joyously to the great sun,
fraternize with the public place, announce the good news, spend your
alphabets lavishly, proclaim rights, sing the Marseillaises, sow
enthusiasms, tear green boughs from the oaks. Make a whirlwind of the
idea. This crowd may be rendered sublime. Let us learn how to make use
of that vast conflagration of principles and virtues, which sparkles,
bursts forth and quivers at certain hours. These bare feet, these bare
arms, these rags, these ignorances, these abjectnesses, these
darknesses, may be employed in the conquest of the ideal. Gaze past the
people, and you will perceive truth. Let that vile sand which you
trample under foot be cast into the furnace, let it melt and seethe
there, it will become a splendid crystal, and it is thanks to it that
Galileo and Newton will discover stars.
CHAPTER XIII—LITTLE GAVROCHE
Eight or nine years after the events narrated in the second part of
this story, people noticed on the Boulevard du Temple, and in the
regions of the Château-d’Eau, a little boy eleven or twelve years of
age, who would have realized with tolerable accuracy that ideal of the
gamin sketched out above, if, with the laugh of his age on his lips, he
had not had a heart absolutely sombre and empty. This child was well