Les Misérables, v. 4

CHAPTER I

WELL CUT OUT

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

This remarkable epoch is so circumscribed, and is beginning to become so remote from us, that we are able to seize its principal outlines. We will make the attempt. The Restoration was one of those intermediate phases which are so difficult to define, in which are fatigue, buzzing, murmurs, sleep, and tumult, and which, after all, are nought but the arrival of a great nation at a halting-place. These epochs are peculiar, and deceive the politician who tries to take advantage of them. At the outset the nation only demands repose; there is but one thirst, for peace, and only one ambition, to be small, – which is the translation of keeping quiet. "Great events, great accidents, great adventures, great men, – O Lord! we have had enough of these, and more than enough." Cæsar would be given for Prusias, and Napoleon for the Roi d'Yvetôt, who was "such a merry little king." Folk have been marching since daybreak and arrive at the evening of a long and rough journey; they made their first halt with Mirabeau, the second with Robespierre, and the third with Napoleon, and they are exhausted. Everybody insists on a bed.

Worn-out devotions, crying heroisms, gorged ambitions, and made fortunes, seek, claim, implore, and solicit, – what? A resting-place, and they have it. They take possession of peace, tranquillity, and leisure, and feel satisfied. Still, at the same time certain facts arise, demand recognition, and knock at doors on their side. These facts 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 the quarter-masters that only prepare a billet for principles.

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

The predestined family which returned to France when Napoleon collapsed had the fatal simplicity of believing that it gave, and that it could take back what it had once given; that the Bourbon family possessed the right divine, and France possessed nothing, and that the political right conceded in the charter of Louis XVIII. was nothing else but a branch of the divine right, detached by the House of Bourbon and graciously permitted to the people up to the day when the king thought proper to clutch it again. Still, from the displeasure which the gift caused it, the Bourbon family ought to have felt that it did not emanate from it. It behaved in a grudging way to the 19th century, and looked with an ugly smile at every expansion of the nation. To employ a trivial, that is to say, a popular and true phrase, it was crabbed, and the people noticed it.

The Government believed that it had strength because the Empire had been removed before it, like a stage scene; but it did not perceive that it had been produced in the same way, nor see that it was held in the same hand which had removed Napoleon. It believed that it had roots, because it was the past, and was mistaken: it formed a portion of the past, but the whole of the past was France; and the roots of French society were not in the Bourbons, but in the nation. These obscure and tenacious roots did not constitute the right of a family, but the history of a people, and were everywhere, except under the throne. The House of Bourbon had been for France the illustrious and blood-stained knot of her history, but was no longer the principal element of her destiny or the necessary basis of her policy. She could do without the Bourbons as she had done for two-and-twenty years: there was a solution of continuity, but they did not suspect it. And how could they suspect it, when they imagined that Louis XVII. reigned at the 9th Thermidor, and that Louis XVIII. was reigning at the day of Marengo? Never, since the origin of history, have princes been so blind in the presence of history and that portion of the divine authority which facts contain and promulgate. Never had the nether claim, which is called the right of kings, denied to such a condition the supreme right. It was a capital error that led this family to lay their hand again on the "granted" guarantees in 1814, or on the concessions, as they entitled them. It is a sad thing that what they called their concessions were our conquests, and what they called our encroachments were our rights. When the hour appeared to have arrived, the Restoration, supposing itself victorious over Bonaparte, and rooted in the country, that is to say, believing itself strong and profound, suddenly made up its mind, and risked its stake. One morning it rose in the face of France, and, raising its voice, contested the collective title, and the individual title, the sovereignty of the nation, and the liberty of the citizen. In other terms, it denied the nation 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 the Restoration the nation had grown accustomed to calm discussion, which the Republic had been deficient in, and to grandeur in peace, which was not known under the Empire. France, strong and free, had been an encouraging example for the other nations of Europe. Under Robespierre the Revolution ruled; under Bonaparte, cannon; while in the reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. the turn arrived for intellect to speak. The wind ceased, and the torch was re-illumined, while a pure mental light played round the serene crests. It was a magnificent, useful, and delightful spectacle; and for fifteen years those great principles, which are so old for the thinker, so new for the statesman, – equality before the law, liberty of conscience, freedom of the press and speech, and the accessibility of all fitting men to office, – could be seen at work in a reign of peace, and publicly. Things went on thus till 1830, and 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 that of the nation. They left the throne with gravity, but without authority; their descent into night was not one of those solemn disappearances which impart a sombre emotion to history, and it was neither the spectral calmness of Charles I. nor the eagle cry of Napoleon. They went away, that was all; they deposited the crown and did not retain the glory, and though they were dignified, they were not august, and they were to a certain extent false to the majesty of their misfortune. Charles X., having a round table cut square during the Cherbourg voyage, seemed more anxious about the imperilled etiquette than the crumbling monarchy. This diminution saddened the devoted men who were attached to the Bourbons personally, and the serious men who honored their race. The people behaved admirably, however, and the nation, attacked one morning by a species of royalist insurrection, felt themselves so strong that they displayed no anger. They defended themselves, restrained themselves, and restored things to their place; the government in the law, the Bourbons in exile, alas! and stopped there. They took the old King Charles X. off the daïs which 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, France victorious, and intoxicated by its victory, which appeared to remember, and practised in the eyes of the whole world, the serious remarks of Guillaume du Vair after the day of the Barricades. "It is easy for those who have been accustomed to obtain the favors of the great, and leap like a bird from branch to branch, from a low to a flourishing fortune, to show themselves bold against their prince in his misfortunes; but for my part the fortune of my kings will be ever venerable to me, and principally of those who are in affliction." The Bourbons bore away with them respect, but not regret; as we have said, their misfortune was greater than themselves, and they faded away on the horizon.

The revolution of July at once found friends and enemies in the whole world; the former rushed toward it enthusiastically and joyfully, while the latter turned away, each according to its nature. The princes of Europe, the owls of this dawn, at the first moment closed their eyes, which were hurt and stupefied, and only opened them again to menace, – it is a terror easy to understand and a pardonable anger. This strange revolution had scarcely required a blow, and had not even done conquered royalty the honor of treating it as an enemy and shedding its blood. In the sight of despotic governments which also have an interest in liberty calumniating itself, the revolution of July had the fault of being formidable and remaining gentle, but no attempt was made or prepared against it. The most dissatisfied and irritated persons saluted it; for whatever their selfishness or rancor may be, men feel a mysterious respect issue from events in which they feel the co-operation of some one who labors higher than man. The revolution of July is the triumph of right overthrowing fact, and is a thing full of splendor. Hence came the brilliancy of the revolution of 1830, and at the same time their mildness, for right that triumphs has no need to be violent. Right is justice and truth, and it is the property of right to remain eternally beautiful and pure. Fact, even the most necessary in appearance and best accepted by contemporaries, if it only exist as fact, and contain too little right, is no right at all, and is infallibly destined to become, with the duration of time, misshapen, foul, and perhaps even monstrous. If we wish to discover at one glance what a degree of ugliness fact can attain, when looked at through the distance of centuries, let us regard Machiavelli. He is not an evil genius, a demon, or a cowardly and servile writer: he is nothing but the fact, and not merely the Italian fact, but the European fact, the fact of the sixteenth century. He appears hideous, and is so in the presence of the moral idea of the 19th century. This struggle between right and fact has endured since the origin of societies. It is the task of wise men to terminate the duel, amalgamate the pure idea with human reality, and to make right penetrate fact and fact right pacifically.

CHAPTER II

BADLY STITCHED

But the task of wise men differs greatly from that of clever men, and the revolution of 1830 quickly stopped; for when a revolution has run ashore, the clever men plunder the wreck. Clever men in our century have decreed themselves the title of statesmen, so that the phrase has eventually become a bit of slang. For it must not be forgotten that where there is only cleverness, littleness necessarily exists, and to say "the clever" is much like saying the "mediocrities." In the same way the word "statesman" is often equivalent to saying "traitor." If we believe clever men, then revolutions like that of July are severed arteries, and a rapid ligature is required. Right, if too loudly proclaimed, begins to give way, and hence so soon as right is substantiated the State must be strengthened, and when liberty is injured attention must be turned to power. Here wise men, though they have not yet separated from clever men, begin to distrust them. Power, very good! But, in the first place, what is power; and secondly, whence does it come? The clever men do not appear to hear the muttered objection and continue their manœuvres. According to politicians who ingeniously place a mask of necessity upon profitable fiction, the first want of a people after a revolution, if that people form part of a monarchical continent, is to obtain a dynasty. In this way they say peace is secured after the revolution, that is to say, the necessary time for repairing the house and dressing the wounds. A dynasty hides the scaffolding and covers the hospital. Now, it is not always easy to obtain a dynasty, although the first man of genius or the first adventurer met with is sufficient to make a king. You have in the first case Bonaparte, and in the second Iturbide. But the first family come across is not sufficient to form a dynasty, for there is necessarily a certain amount of antiquity required as a race, and the wrinkle of centuries cannot be improvised.

If we place ourselves at the standpoint of statesmen, with all due reserves of course, what are the qualities of a king who issues from a revolution? He may be, and it is useful that he should be, revolutionary; that is to say, have played a personal part in the revolution, have become either compromised or renowned in it, and have wielded the axe or drawn the sword. What are the qualities of a dynasty? It must be national; that is to say, distantly revolutionary, not through acts done, but through ideas accepted. It must be composed of the past and be historical, and of the future and be sympathetic. All this explains why the first revolutions are satisfied with finding a man, Napoleon or Cromwell, while the second are determined on finding a family, like the House of Brunswick or the House of Orléans. Royal houses resemble those Indian fig-trees, each branch of which bends down, becomes rooted in the ground, and grows into a fig-tree. Each branch of the family may become a dynasty, on the sole condition that it bends down to the people. Such is the theory of clever men.

This, then, is the great art, – to give success the sound of a catastrophe, so that those who profit by it may also tremble at it; to season every step taken with fear; to increase the curve of the transition until progress is checked; to spoil this daybreak, denounce and retrench the roughness of enthusiasm; to cut angles and nails; to pad the triumph, muffle the right, roll the giant people in flannel, and put it to bed at full speed; to place this excess of health under medical treatment, and regard Hercules as a convalescent; to dilute the event in expediency, and offer to minds thirsting for the ideal this weak nectar; to take precautions against extreme success, and provide the revolution with a sunshade. 1830 practised this theory, which had already been applied to England by 1688. 1830 is a revolution arrested half-way, and a moiety of progress is almost right. Now, logic ignores this as absolutely as the sun ignores a rush-light. Who check revolutions half-way? The bourgeoisie. Why? Because the bourgeoisie represent satisfied self-interest. Yesterday appetite was felt, to-day fulness, and to-morrow satiety. The phenomenon of 1814, after Napoleon, was reproduced in 1830 after Charles X. Attempts have been made, though wrongly, to convert the bourgeoisie into a class, but they are merely the contented portion of the population. The bourgeois is a man who has at last time to sit down, and a chair is not a caste. But through a desire to sit down too soon, the progress of the human race may be arrested, and this has frequently been the fault of the bourgeoisie; and people are not a class because they commit a fault, and selfishness is not one of the divisions of the social order. However, as we must be just even towards selfishness, the condition for which that portion of the nation called the bourgeoisie yearned after the shock of 1830 was not inertness, which is complicated with indifference and sloth, and contains a little shame; nor was it sleep, which presupposes a momentary oblivion accessible to dreams, but it was a halt. This word contains a double, singular, and almost contradictory meaning, for it implies troops on the march, that is to say, movement, and a stop-page, that is to say, rest. A halt is the restoration of strength, it is repose armed and awake, it is the accomplished fact, posting its sentries and standing on guard. A halt presupposes a combat yesterday and a combat to-morrow, – it is the interlude between 1830 and 1848.

What we here call combat may also be called progress. Hence the bourgeoisie as well as the statesmen required a man who expressed the idea of a halt, an "although-because," a composite individuality signifying revolution and stability; in other words, strengthening the present by the evident compatibility of the past with the future. This man was found "ready-made," and his name was Louis Philippe d'Orléans. The 221 made Louis Philippe king, and Lafayette undertook the coronation. He named him "the best of Republics," and the Town Hall of Paris was substituted for the Cathedral of Rheims. This substitution of a half-throne for a complete throne was "the work of 1830." When the clever men had completed their task, the immense fault of their solution was apparent; all this had been done beyond the pale of absolute right, which shouted, "I protest!" and then, formidable thing, receded into the darkness.

CHAPTER III

LOUIS PHILIPPE

Revolutions have a terrible arm and a lucky hand; they hit hard and choose well. Even when incomplete, bastardized, and reduced to the state of a younger revolution, like that of 1830, they nearly always retain sufficient providential light not to fall badly, and their eclipse is never an abdication. Still, we must not boast too loudly, for revolutions themselves are mistaken, and grave errors have been witnessed ere now. Let us return to 1830, which was fortunate in its deviation. In the establishment which was called order after the revolution was cut short, the king was worth more than the Royalty. Louis Philippe was a rare man.

Son of a father to whom history will certainly grant extenuating circumstances, but as worthy of esteem as his father was of blame; possessing all the private virtues and several of the public virtues; careful of his health, his fortune, his person, and his business affairs; knowing the value of a minute, but not always the value of a year; sober, serious, peaceful, and patient; a good man and a good prince; sleeping with his wife, and having in his palace lackeys whose business it was to show the conjugal couch to the cits, – a regular ostentation which had grown useful after the old illegitimate displays of the elder branch; acquainted with all the languages of Europe, and, what is rarer still, with all the languages of all the interests, and speaking them; an admirable representative of the "middle classes," but surpassing them, and in every way greater; possessing the excellent sense, while appreciating the blood from which he sprang, of claiming merit for his personal value, and very particular on the question of his race by declaring himself an Orléans and not a Bourbon; a thorough first prince of the blood, so long as he had only been Most Serene Highness, but a frank bourgeois on the day when he became His Majesty; diffuse in public, and concise in private life; branded as a miser, but not proved to be one; in reality, one of those saving men who are easily prodigal to satisfy their caprices or their duty; well read and caring but little for literature; a gentleman but not a cavalier; simple, calm, and strong; adored by his family and his household; a seductive speaker, a statesman who had lost his illusions, cold-hearted, swayed by the immediate interest, governing from hand to mouth; incapable of rancor and of gratitude; pitilessly employing superiorities upon mediocrities, and clever in confounding by parliamentary majorities those mysterious unanimities which growl hoarsely beneath thrones; expansive, at times imprudent in his expansiveness, but displaying marvellous skill in his imprudence; fertile in expedients, faces, and masks; terrifying France by Europe, and Europe by France; loving his country undeniably, but preferring his family; valuing domination more than authority, and authority more than dignity; a temperament which has this mournful feature about it, that by turning everything to success it admits of craft and does not absolutely repudiate baseness, but at the same time has this advantage, that it preserves politics from violent shocks, the State from fractures, and society from catastrophes; minute, correct, vigilant, attentive, sagacious, and indefatigable; contradicting himself at times, and belying himself; bold against Austria at Ancona, obstinate against England in Spain, bombarding Antwerp and paying Pritchard; singing the Marseillaise with conviction; inaccessible to despondency, to fatigue, to a taste for the beautiful and ideal, to rash generosity, to Utopias, chimeras, anger, vanity, and fear; possessing every form of personal bravery; a general at Valmy, a private at Jemmappes; eight times attacked by regicides, and always smiling; brave as a grenadier, and courageous as a thinker; merely anxious about the chances of a European convulsion, and unfitted for great political adventures; ever ready to risk his life, but not his work; disguising his will in influence for the sake of being obeyed as an intellect rather than as king; gifted with observation and not with divination; paying but slight attention to minds, but a good judge of men, – that is to say, requiring to see ere he could judge; endowed with prompt and penetrating sense, practical wisdom, fluent tongue, and a prodigious memory, and incessantly drawing on that memory, his sole similitude with Cæsar, Alexander, and Napoleon; knowing facts, details, dates, and proper names, but ignorant of the various passions and tendencies of the crowd, the internal aspirations and concealed agitation of minds, – in one word, of all that may be called the invisible currents of consciences; accepted by the surface, but agreeing little with the lower strata of French society; getting out of scrapes by skill; governing too much and not reigning sufficiently; his own Prime Minister; excellent in the art of setting up the littleness of realities as an obstacle to the immensity of ideas; mingling with a true creative faculty of civilization, order, and organization, I do not know what pettifogging temper and chicanery; the founder of a family and at the same time its man-of-law; having something of Charlemagne and something of an attorney in him; but, on the whole, as a lofty and original figure, as a prince who managed to acquire power in spite of the anxiety of France, and influence in spite of the jealousy of Europe, – Louis Philippe would be ranked among the eminent men of his age, and among the most illustrious governors known in history, if he had loved glory a little, and had a feeling for what is grand to the same extent that he had a feeling for what is useful.

Louis Philippe had been handsome, and when aged, remained graceful: though not always admired by the nation he was always so by the mob, for he had the art of pleasing and the gift of charm. He was deficient in majesty, and neither wore a crown though king, nor displayed white hair though an old man. His manners belonged to the ancient régime, and his habits to the new, – a mixture of the noble and the citizen which suited 1830. Louis Philippe was transition on a throne, and retained the old pronunciation and orthography, which he placed at the service of modern opinions: he was fond of Poland and Hungary, but he wrote "les Polonois," and pronounced, "les Hongrais." He wore the uniform of the National Guard like Charles X., and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor like Napoleon. He went but rarely to Mass, not at all to the chase, and never to the opera: he was incorruptible by priests, whippers-in, and ballet girls, and this formed part of his citizen popularity. He had no Court, and went out with an umbrella under his arm, and this umbrella for a long time formed part of his nimbus. He was a bit of a mason, a bit of a gardener, and a bit of a surgeon: he bled a postilion who had fallen from his horse, and no more thought of going out without his lancet than Henry III. would without his dagger. The Royalists ridiculed this absurd king, the first who shed blood in order to cure.