After ?schylus, Thrasybulus; after Diderot, Danton.
Multitudes have a tendency to accept the master.
Their mass bears witness to apathy.
A crowd is easily led as a whole to obedience.
Men must be stirred up, pushed on, treated roughly by the very benefit of their deliverance, their eyes must be wounded by the true, light must be hurled at them in terrible handfuls.
They must be a little thunderstruck themselves at their own well-being; this dazzling awakens them.
Hence the necessity of tocsins and wars.
Great combatants must rise, must enlighten nations with audacity, and shake up that sad humanity which is covered with gloom by the right divine, C?sarian glory, force, fanaticism, irresponsible power, and absolute majesty; a rabble stupidly occupied in the contemplation, in their twilight splendor, of these sombre triumphs of the night.
Down with the tyrant!
Of whom are you speaking?
Do you call Louis Philippe the tyrant?
No; no more than Louis XVI.
Both of them are what history is in the habit of calling good kings; but principles are not to be parcelled out, the logic of the true is rectilinear, the peculiarity of truth is that it lacks complaisance; no concessions, then; all encroachments on man should be repressed. There is a divine right in Louis XVI., there is because a Bourbon in Louis Philippe; both represent in a certain measure the confiscation of right, and, in order to clear away universal insurrection, they must be combated; it must be done, France being always the one to begin.
When the master falls in France, he falls everywhere.
In short, what cause is more just, and consequently, what war is greater, than that which re-establishes social truth, restores her throne to liberty, restores the people to the people, restores sovereignty to man, replaces the purple on the head of France, restores equity and reason in their plenitude, suppresses every germ of antagonism by restoring each one to himself, annihilates the obstacle which royalty presents to the whole immense universal concord, and places the human race once more on a level with the right?
These wars build up peace.
An enormous fortress of prejudices, privileges, superstitions, lies, exactions, abuses, violences, iniquities, and darkness still stands erect in this world, with its towers of hatred.
It must be cast down.
This monstrous mass must be made to crumble.
To conquer at Austerlitz is grand; to take the Bastille is immense.
There is no one who has not noticed it in his own case—the soul,—and therein lies the marvel of its unity complicated with ubiquity, has a strange aptitude for reasoning almost coldly in the most violent extremities, and it often happens that heartbroken passion and profound despair in the very agony of their blackest monologues, treat subjects and discuss theses.
Logic is mingled with convulsion, and the thread of the syllogism floats, without breaking, in the mournful storm of thought.
This was the situation of Marius’ mind.
As he meditated thus, dejected but resolute, hesitating in every direction, and, in short, shuddering at what he was about to do, his glance strayed to the interior of the barricade.
The insurgents were here conversing in a low voice, without moving, and there was perceptible that quasi-silence which marks the last stage of expectation.
Overhead, at the small window in the third story Marius descried a sort of spectator who appeared to him to be singularly attentive.
This was the porter who had been killed by Le Cabuc.
Below, by the lights of the torch, which was thrust between the paving-stones, this head could be vaguely distinguished.
Nothing could be stranger, in that sombre and uncertain gleam, than that livid, motionless, astonished face, with its bristling hair, its eyes fixed and staring, and its yawning mouth, bent over the street in an attitude of curiosity.
One would have said that the man who was dead was surveying those who were about to die.
A long trail of blood which had flowed from that head, descended in reddish threads from the window to the height of the first floor, where it stopped.
BOOK FOURTEENTH.—THE GRANDEURS OF DESPAIR
CHAPTER I—THE FLAG: ACT FIRST
As yet, nothing had come.
Ten o’clock had sounded from Saint-Merry.
Enjolras and Combeferre had gone and seated themselves, carbines in hand, near the outlet of the grand barricade.
They no longer addressed each other, they listened, seeking to catch even the faintest and most distant sound of marching.
Suddenly, in the midst of the dismal calm, a clear, gay, young voice, which seemed to come from the Rue Saint-Denis, rose and began to sing distinctly, to the old popular air of
“By the Light of the Moon,” this bit of poetry, terminated by a cry like the crow of a cock:—
Mon nez est en larmes,
Mon ami Bugeaud,
Prete moi tes gendarmes
Pour leur dire un mot.
En capote bleue,
La poule au shako,
Voici la banlieue!
Co-cocorico!
They pressed each other’s hands.
“That is Gavroche,” said Enjolras.
“He is warning us,” said Combeferre.