Les Misérables
A capital error which led this family to lay its hand once more on the
guarantees “granted” in 1814, on the concessions, as it termed them.
Sad. A sad thing! What it termed its concessions were our conquests;
what it termed our encroachments were our rights.
When the hour seemed to it to have come, the Restoration, supposing
itself victorious over Bonaparte and well-rooted in the country, that
is to say, believing itself to be strong and deep, abruptly decided on
its plan of action, and risked its stroke. One morning it drew itself
up before the face of France, and, elevating its voice, it contested
the collective title and the individual right of the nation to
sovereignty, of the citizen to liberty. In other words, it denied to
the nation that which made it a nation, and to the citizen that which
made him a citizen.
This is the foundation of those famous acts which are called the
ordinances of July. The Restoration fell.
It fell justly. But, we admit, it had not been absolutely hostile to
all forms of progress. Great things had been accomplished, with it
alongside.
Under the Restoration, the nation had grown accustomed to calm
discussion, which had been lacking under the Republic, and to grandeur
in peace, which had been wanting under the Empire. France free and
strong had offered an encouraging spectacle to the other peoples of
Europe. The Revolution had had the word under Robespierre; the cannon
had had the word under Bonaparte; it was under Louis XVIII. and Charles
X. that it was the turn of intelligence to have the word. The wind
ceased, the torch was lighted once more. On the lofty heights, the pure
light of mind could be seen flickering. A magnificent, useful, and
charming spectacle. For a space of fifteen years, those great
principles which are so old for the thinker, so new for the statesman,
could be seen at work in perfect peace, on the public square; equality
before the law, liberty of conscience, liberty of speech, liberty of
the press, the accessibility of all aptitudes to all functions. Thus it
proceeded until 1830. The Bourbons were an instrument of civilization
which broke in the hands of Providence.
The fall of the Bourbons was full of grandeur, not on their side, but
on the side of the nation. They quitted the throne with gravity, but
without authority; their descent into the night was not one of those
solemn disappearances which leave a sombre emotion in history; it was
neither the spectral calm of Charles I., nor the eagle scream of
Napoleon. They departed, that is all. They laid down the crown, and
retained no aureole. They were worthy, but they were not august. They
lacked, in a certain measure, the majesty of their misfortune. Charles
X. during the voyage from Cherbourg, causing a round table to be cut
over into a square table, appeared to be more anxious about imperilled
etiquette than about the crumbling monarchy. This diminution saddened
devoted men who loved their persons, and serious men who honored their
race. The populace was admirable. The nation, attacked one morning with
weapons, by a sort of royal insurrection, felt itself in the possession
of so much force that it did not go into a rage. It defended itself,
restrained itself, restored things to their places, the government to
law, the Bourbons to exile, alas! and then halted! It took the old king
Charles X. from beneath that dais which had sheltered Louis XIV. and
set him gently on the ground. It touched the royal personages only with
sadness and precaution. It was not one man, it was not a few men, it
was France, France entire, France victorious and intoxicated with her
victory, who seemed to be coming to herself, and who put into practice,
before the eyes of the whole world, these grave words of Guillaume du
Vair after the day of the Barricades:—
“It is easy for those who are accustomed to skim the favors of the
great, and to spring, like a bird from bough to bough, from an
afflicted fortune to a flourishing one, to show themselves harsh
towards their Prince in his adversity; but as for me, the fortune of my
Kings and especially of my afflicted Kings, will always be venerable to
me.”
The Bourbons carried away with them respect, but not regret. As we have
just stated, their misfortune was greater than they were. They faded
out in the horizon.
The Revolution of July instantly had friends and enemies throughout the
entire world. The first rushed toward her with joy and enthusiasm, the
others turned away, each according to his nature. At the first blush,
the princes of Europe, the owls of this dawn, shut their eyes, wounded
and stupefied, and only opened them to threaten. A fright which can be
comprehended, a wrath which can be pardoned. This strange revolution
had hardly produced a shock; it had not even paid to vanquished royalty
the honor of treating it as an enemy, and of shedding its blood. In the
eyes of despotic governments, who are always interested in having
liberty calumniate itself, the Revolution of July committed the fault
of being formidable and of remaining gentle. Nothing, however, was
attempted or plotted against it. The most discontented, the most
irritated, the most trembling, saluted it; whatever our egotism and our
rancor may be, a mysterious respect springs from events in which we are
sensible of the collaboration of some one who is working above man.
The Revolution of July is the triumph of right overthrowing the fact. A
thing which is full of splendor.
Right overthrowing the fact. Hence the brilliancy of the Revolution of
1830, hence, also, its mildness. Right triumphant has no need of being
violent.
Right is the just and the true.
The property of right is to remain eternally beautiful and pure. The
fact, even when most necessary to all appearances, even when most
thoroughly accepted by contemporaries, if it exist only as a fact, and
if it contain only too little of right, or none at all, is infallibly
destined to become, in the course of time, deformed, impure, perhaps,
even monstrous. If one desires to learn at one blow, to what degree of
hideousness the fact can attain, viewed at the distance of centuries,
let him look at Machiavelli. Machiavelli is not an evil genius, nor a
demon, nor a miserable and cowardly writer; he is nothing but the fact.
And he is not only the Italian fact; he is the European fact, the fact
of the sixteenth century. He seems hideous, and so he is, in the
presence of the moral idea of the nineteenth.
This conflict of right and fact has been going on ever since the origin
of society. To terminate this duel, to amalgamate the pure idea with
the humane reality, to cause right to penetrate pacifically into the
fact and the fact into right, that is the task of sages.
CHAPTER II—BADLY SEWED
But the task of sages is one thing, the task of clever men is another.
The Revolution of 1830 came to a sudden halt.
As soon as a revolution has made the coast, the skilful make haste to
prepare the shipwreck.
The skilful in our century have conferred on themselves the title of
Statesmen; so that this word, _statesmen_, has ended by becoming
somewhat of a slang word. It must be borne in mind, in fact, that
wherever there is nothing but skill, there is necessarily pettiness. To
say “the skilful” amounts to saying “the mediocre.”
In the same way, to say “statesmen” is sometimes equivalent to saying
“traitors.” If, then, we are to believe the skilful, revolutions like
the Revolution of July are severed arteries; a prompt ligature is
indispensable. The right, too grandly proclaimed, is shaken. Also,
right once firmly fixed, the state must be strengthened. Liberty once
assured, attention must be directed to power.
Here the sages are not, as yet, separated from the skilful, but they
begin to be distrustful. Power, very good. But, in the first place,
what is power? In the second, whence comes it? The skilful do not seem
to hear the murmured objection, and they continue their manœuvres.
According to the politicians, who are ingenious in putting the mask of
necessity on profitable fictions, the first requirement of a people
after a revolution, when this people forms part of a monarchical
continent, is to procure for itself a dynasty. In this way, say they,
peace, that is to say, time to dress our wounds, and to repair the
house, can be had after a revolution. The dynasty conceals the
scaffolding and covers the ambulance. Now, it is not always easy to
procure a dynasty.
If it is absolutely necessary, the first man of genius or even the
first man of fortune who comes to hand suffices for the manufacturing
of a king. You have, in the first case, Napoleon; in the second,
Iturbide.
But the first family that comes to hand does not suffice to make a
dynasty. There is necessarily required a certain modicum of antiquity
in a race, and the wrinkle of the centuries cannot be improvised.
If we place ourselves at the point of view of the “statesmen,” after
making all allowances, of course, after a revolution, what are the
qualities of the king which result from it? He may be and it is useful
for him to be a revolutionary; that is to say, a participant in his own
person in that revolution, that he should have lent a hand to it, that
he should have either compromised or distinguished himself therein,
that he should have touched the axe or wielded the sword in it.
What are the qualities of a dynasty? It should be national; that is to
say, revolutionary at a distance, not through acts committed, but by
reason of ideas accepted. It should be composed of past and be
historic; be composed of future and be sympathetic.
All this explains why the early revolutions contented themselves with
finding a man, Cromwell or Napoleon; and why the second absolutely
insisted on finding a family, the House of Brunswick or the House of
Orleans.
Royal houses resemble those Indian fig-trees, each branch of which,
bending over to the earth, takes root and becomes a fig-tree itself.
Each branch may become a dynasty. On the sole condition that it shall
bend down to the people.
Such is the theory of the skilful.
Here, then, lies the great art: to make a little render to success the
sound of a catastrophe in order that those who profit by it may tremble
from it also, to season with fear every step that is taken, to augment
the curve of the transition to the point of retarding progress, to dull
that aurora, to denounce and retrench the harshness of enthusiasm, to
cut all angles and nails, to wad triumph, to muffle up right, to
envelop the giant-people in flannel, and to put it to bed very
speedily, to impose a diet on that excess of health, to put Hercules on
the treatment of a convalescent, to dilute the event with the
expedient, to offer to spirits thirsting for the ideal that nectar
thinned out with a potion, to take one’s precautions against too much
success, to garnish the revolution with a shade.
1830 practised this theory, already applied to England by 1688.
1830 is a revolution arrested midway. Half of progress, quasi-right.
Now, logic knows not the “almost,” absolutely as the sun knows not the
candle.
Who arrests revolutions half-way? The bourgeoisie?
Why?
Because the bourgeoisie is interest which has reached satisfaction.
Yesterday it was appetite, to-day it is plenitude, to-morrow it will be
satiety.
The phenomenon of 1814 after Napoleon was reproduced in 1830 after
Charles X.
The attempt has been made, and wrongly, to make a class of the
bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie is simply the contented portion of the
people. The bourgeois is the man who now has time to sit down. A chair
is not a caste.
But through a desire to sit down too soon, one may arrest the very
march of the human race. This has often been the fault of the
bourgeoisie.