They went away, and while doing so Montparnasse muttered,—
"No matter; if you had been agreeable I would have cut her throat."
Babet replied,—
"I wouldn't; for I never strike a lady."
At the corner of the street they stopped, and exchanged in a low voice this enigmatical dialogue.
"Where shall we go and sleep to-night?"
"Under Pantin [Paris]."
"Have you your key about you, Thénardier?"
"Of course."
Éponine, who did not take her eyes off them, saw them return by the road along which they had come. She rose and crawled after them, along the walls and the houses. She followed them thus along the boulevard; there they separated, and she saw the six men bury themselves in the darkness, where they seemed to fade away.
After the departure of the bandits the Rue Plumet resumed its calm, nocturnal aspect. What had just taken place in this street would not have astonished a forest, for the thickets, the coppices, the heather, the interlaced branches, and the tall grass, exist in a sombre way; the savage crowd catches glimpses there of the sudden apparitions of the invisible world; what there is below man distinguishes there through the mist what is beyond man, and things unknown to us living beings confront each other there in the night. Bristling and savage nature is startled by certain approaches, in which it seems to feel the supernatural; the forces of the shadow know each other and maintain a mysterious equilibrium between themselves. Teeth and claws fear that which is unseizable, and blood-drinking bestiality, voracious, starving appetites in search of prey, the instincts armed with nails and jaws, which have for their source and object the stomach, look at and sniff anxiously the impassive spectral lineaments prowling about in a winding-sheet or standing erect in this vaguely-rustling robe, and which seems to them to live a dead and terrible life. These brutalities, which are only matter, have a confused fear at having to deal with the immense condensed obscurity in an unknown being. A black figure barring the passage stops the wild beast short; what comes from the cemetery intimidates and disconcerts what comes from the den; ferocious things are afraid of sinister things, and wolves recoil on coming across a ghoul.
While this sort of human-faced dog was mounting guard against the railing, and six bandits fled before a girl, Marius was by Cosette's side. The sky had never been more star-spangled and more charming, the trees more rustling, or the smell of the grass more penetrating; never had the birds fallen asleep beneath the frondage with a softer noise; never had the universal harmonies of serenity responded better to the internal music of the soul; never had Marius been more enamoured, happier, or in greater ecstasy. But he had found Cosette sad, she had been crying, and her eyes were red. It was the first cloud in this admirable dream. Marius's first remark was,—
"What is the matter with you?"
And she replied,—
"I will tell you."
Then she sat down on the bench near the house, and while he took his seat, all trembling, by her side, she continued,—
"My father told me this morning to hold myself in readiness, for he had business to attend to, and we were probably going away."
Marius shuddered from head to foot. When we reach the end of life, death signifies a departure, but at the beginning, departure means death. For six weeks past Marius had slowly and gradually taken possession of Cosette; it was a perfectly ideal but profound possession. As we have explained, in first love men take the soul long before the body; at a later date they take the body before the soul, and at times they do not take the soul at all,—the Faublas and Prudhommes add, because there is no such thing, but the sarcasm is fortunately a blasphemy. Marius, then, possessed Cosette in the way that minds possess; but he enveloped her with his entire soul, and jealously seized her with an incredible conviction. He possessed her touch, her breath, her perfume, the deep flash of her blue eyes, the softness of her skin when he touched her hand, the charming mark which she had on her neck, and all her thoughts. They had agreed never to sleep without dreaming of each other, and had kept their word. He, therefore, possessed all Cosette's dreams. He looked at her incessantly, and sometimes breathed on the short hairs which she had on the back of her neck, and said to himself that there was not one of those hairs which did not belong to him. He contemplated and adored the things she wore, her bows,—her cuffs, her gloves, and slippers,—like sacred objects of which he was the master. He thought that he was the lord of the small tortoise-shell combs which she had in her hair; and he said to himself, in the confused stammering of delight that came on, that there was not a seam of her dress, not a mesh of her stockings, not a wrinkle in her bodice, which was not his. By the side of Cosette felt close to his property, near his creature, who was at once his despot and his slave. It seemed that they had so blended their souls that if they had wished to take them back it would have been impossible for them to recognize them. This is mine—no, it is mine—I assure you that you are mistaken. This is really I—what you take for yourself is myself; Marius was something which formed part of Cosette, and Cosette was something that formed part of Marius. Marius felt Cosette live in him; to have Cosette, to possess Cosette, was to him not very different from breathing. It was in the midst of this faith, this intoxication, this virgin, extraordinary, and absolute possession, and this sovereignty, that the words "We are going away" suddenly fell on him, and the stern voice of reality shouted to him, "Cosette is not thine." Marius awoke. For six weeks, as we said, he had been living out of life, and the word "depart" made him roughly re-enter it. He could not find a word to say, and Cosette merely noticed that his hand was very cold. She said to him in her turn,—
"What is the matter with you?"
He answered, in so low a voice that Cosette could scarce hear him,—
"I do not understand what you said."
She continued,—
"This morning my father told me to prepare my clothes and hold myself ready; that he would give me his linen to put in a portmanteau; that he was obliged to make a journey; that we were going away; that we must have a large trunk for myself and a small one for him; to get all this ready within a week, and that we should probably go to England."
"Why, it is monstrous!" Marius exclaimed.
It is certain that at this moment, in Marius's mind, no abuse of power, no violence, no abomination of the most prodigious tyrants, no deed of Busiris, Tiberius, or Henry VIII., equalled in ferocity this one,—M. Fauchelevent taking his daughter to England because he had business to attend to. He asked, in a faint voice,—
"And when will you start?"
"He did not say when."
"And when will you return?"
"He did not tell me."
And Marius rose and said coldly,—
"Will you go, Cosette?"
Cosette turned to him, her beautiful eyes full of agony, and answered, with a species of wildness,—
"Where?"
"To England; will you go?"
"What can I do?" she said, clasping her hands.
"Then you will go?"
"If my father goes."
"So you are determined to go?"
Cosette seized Marius's hand and pressed it as sole reply.
"Very well," said Marius; "in that case I shall go elsewhere."
Cosette felt the meaning of this remark even more than she comprehended it; she turned so pale that her face became white in the darkness, and stammered,—
"What do you mean?"
Marius looked at her, then slowly raised his eyes to heaven, and replied,—
"Nothing."
When he looked down again he saw Cosette smiling at him; the smile of the woman whom we love has a brilliancy which is visible at night.
"How foolish we are! Marius, I have an idea."
"What is it?"
"Follow us if we go away! I will tell you whither, and you can join me where I am."
Marius was now a thoroughly wide-awake man, and had fallen back into reality; hence he cried to Cosette,—
"Go with you! Are you mad? Why, it would require money, and I have none! Go to England! Why, I already owe more than ten louis to Courfeyrac, one of my friends, whom you do not know! I have an old hat, which is not worth three francs, a coat with buttons missing in front, my shirt is all torn, my boots let in water, I am out at elbows, but I have not thought of it for six weeks, and did not tell you. Cosette, I am a wretch; you only see me at night and give me your love: were you to see me by day you would give me a sou. Go to England! Why, I have not enough to pay for the passport!"
He threw himself against a tree, with his arms over his head and his forehead pressed to the bark, neither feeling the wood that grazed his skin nor the fever which spotted his temples, motionless and ready to fall, like the statue of despair. He remained for a long time in this state—people would remain for an eternity in such abysses. At length he turned and heard behind a little stifled, soft, and sad sound; it was Cosette sobbing; she had been crying for more than two hours by the side of Marius, who was reflecting. He went up to her, fell on his knees, seized her foot, which peeped out from under her skirt, and kissed it. She let him do so in silence, for there are moments when a woman accepts, like a sombre and resigned duty, the worship of love.
"Do not weep," he said.
She continued,—
"But I am perhaps going away, and you are not able to come with me."
He said, "Do you love me?"
She replied by sobbing that Paradisaic word, which is never more charming than through tears, "I adore you."
He pursued, with an accent which was an inexpressible caress,—
"Do not weep. Will you do so much for me as to check your tears?"
"Do you love me?" she said.
He took her hand.
"Cosette, I have never pledged my word of honor to any one, because it frightens me, and I feel that my father is by the side of it. Well, I pledge you my most sacred word of honor that if you go away I shall die."
There was in the accent with which he uttered these words such a solemn and calm melancholy that Cosette trembled, and she felt that chill which is produced by the passing of a sombre and true thing. In her terror she ceased to weep.
"Now listen to me," he said; "do not expect me to-morrow."
"Why not?"
"Do not expect me till the day after."
"Oh, why?"
"You will see."
"A day without your coming!—oh, it is impossible!"
"Let us sacrifice a day, to have, perhaps, one whole life."
And Marius added in a low voice and aside,—"He is a man who makes no change in his habits, and he never received anybody before the evening."
"What man are you talking about?" Cosette asked.
"I? I did not say anything."
"What do you hope for, then?"
"Wait till the day after to-morrow."
"Do you desire it?"
"Yes, Cosette."
He took her head between his two hands, as she stood on tiptoe to reach him and tried to see his hopes in his eyes. Marius added,—
"By the bye, you must know my address, for something might happen; I live with my friend Courfeyrac, at No. 16, Rue de la Verrerie."
He felt in his pockets, took out a knife, and scratched the address on the plaster of the wall. In the mean while Cosette had begun looking in his eyes again.
"Tell me your thought, Marius, for you have one. Tell it to me. Oh, tell it to me, so that I may pass a good night!"
"My thought is this: it is impossible that God can wish to separate us. Expect me the day after to-morrow."
"What shall I do till then?" Cosette said. "You are in the world, and come and go; how happy men are! but I shall remain all alone. Oh, I shall be so sad! What will you do to-morrow night, tell me?"
"I shall try something."
"In that case I shall pray to Heaven, and think of you, so that you may succeed. I will not question you any more, as you do not wish it, and you are my master. I will spend my evening in singing the song from 'Euryanthe,' of which you are so fond, and which you heard one night under my shutters. But you will come early the next evening, and I shall expect you at nine o'clock exactly. I warn you. Oh, good Heaven! how sad it is that the days are so long! You hear; I shall be in the garden as it is striking nine."
"And I too."
And without saying a word, moved by the same thought, carried away by those electric currents which place two lovers in continual communication, both intoxicated with voluptuousness, even in their grief, fell into each other's arms without noticing that their lips were joined together, while their upraised eyes, overflowing with ecstasy and full of tears, contemplated the stars. When Marius left, the street was deserted, for it was the moment when Éponine followed the bandits into the boulevard. While Marius dreamed with his head leaning against a tree an idea had crossed his mind,—an idea, alas! which himself considered mad and impossible. He had formed a violent resolution.
Father Gillenormand at this period had just passed his ninety-first birthday, and still lived with his daughter at No. 6, Rue des Filles-de-Calvaire, in the old house which was his own property. He was, it will be remembered, one of those antique old men whose age falls on without bending them, and whom even sorrow cannot bow. Still, for some time past his daughter had said, "My father is breaking." He no longer slapped the servants, or rapped so violently with his cane the staircase railing where Basque kept him waiting. The Revolution of July had not exasperated him for more than six months, and he had seen almost with tranquillity in the Moniteur this association of words, M. Humblot-Conté, Peer of France. The truth is, that the old man was filled with grief; he did not bend, he did not surrender, for that was not possible either with his moral or physical nature; but he felt himself failing inwardly. For four years he had been awaiting Marius with a firm foot,—that is really the expression,—with the conviction that the wicked young scape-grace would ring his bell some day; and now he had begun to say to himself, when depressed, that Marius might remain away a little too long. It was not death that was insupportable to him, but the idea that perhaps he might not see Marius again. This idea had never occurred to him till one day, and at present it rose before him constantly, and chilled him to death. Absence, as ever happens in natural and true feelings, had only heightened the grandfather's love for the ungrateful boy who had gone away like that. It is on December nights, when the thermometer is almost down at zero, that people think most of the sun. M. Gillenormand was, or fancied himself, utterly incapable of taking a step toward his grandson; "I would rot first," he said to himself. He did not think himself at all in the wrong, but he only thought of Marius with profound tenderness, and the dumb despair of an old man who is going down into the valley of the shadows. He was beginning to lose his teeth, which added to his sorrow. M. Gillenormand, without confessing it to himself, however, for he would have been furious and ashamed of it, had never loved a mistress as he loved Marius. He had hung up in his room, as the first thing he might see on awaking, an old portrait of his other daughter, the one who was dead, Madame de Pontmercy, taken when she was eighteen. He incessantly regarded this portrait, and happened to say one day, while gazing at it,—
"I can notice a likeness."
"To my sister?" Mlle. Gillenormand remarked; "oh, certainly."
The old man added, "And to him too."
When he was once sitting, with his knees against each other, and his eyes almost closed in a melancholy posture, his daughter ventured to say to him,—
"Father, are you still so furious against—" She stopped, not daring to go further.
"Against whom?" he asked.
"That poor Marius."
He raised his old head, laid his thin wrinkled fist on the table, and cried, in his loudest and most irritated accent,—
"Poor Marius, you say! That gentleman is a scoundrel, a scamp, a little vain ingrate, without heart or soul, a proud and wicked man!"
And he turned away, so that his daughter might not see a tear which he had in his eyes. Three days later he interrupted a silence which had lasted four hours to say to his daughter gruffly,—
"I had had the honor of begging Mademoiselle Gillenormand never to mention his name to me."
Aunt Gillenormand gave up all attempts, and formed this profound diagnostic: "My father was never very fond of my sister after her folly. It is clear that he detests Marius." "After her folly" meant, "since she married the Colonel." Still, as may be conjectured, Mademoiselle Gillenormand failed in her attempt to substitute her favorite, the officer of lancers, in Marius's place. Théodule had met with no success, and M. Gillenormand refused to accept the qui pro quo; for the vacuum in the heart cannot be stopped by a bung. Théodule, on his side, while sniffing the inheritance, felt a repugnance to the labor of pleasing, and the old gentleman annoyed the lancer, while the lancer offended the old gentleman. Lieutenant Théodule was certainly gay but gossiping, frivolous but vulgar, a good liver but bad company; he had mistresses, it is true, and he talked a good deal about them, it is also true, but then he talked badly. All his qualities had a defect, and M. Gillenormand was worn out with listening to the account of the few amours he had had round his barracks in the Rue de Babylone. And then Lieutenant Théodule called sometimes in uniform with the tricolor cockade, which rendered him simply impossible. M. Gillenormand eventually said to his daughter, "I have had enough of Théodule, for I care but little for a warrior in peace times. You can receive him if you like, but for my part I do not know whether I do not prefer the sabrers to the trailing of sabres, and the clash of blades in a battle is less wretched, after all, than the noise of scabbards on the pavement. And then, to throw up one's head like a king of clubs, and to lace one's self like a woman, to wear stays under a cuirass, is doubly ridiculous. When a man is a real man he keeps himself at an equal distance from braggadocio and foppishness. So keep your Théodule for yourself." Though his daughter said to him, "After all, he is your grand-nephew," it happened that M. Gillenormand, who was grandfather to the end of his nails, was not a grand-uncle at all; the fact is, that as he was a man of sense and comparison, Théodule only served to make him regret Marius the more.
One evening, it was the 4th of June, which did not prevent Father Gillenormand from having an excellent fire in his chimney, he had dismissed his daughter, who was sewing in the adjoining room. He was alone in his apartment with the pastoral hangings, with his feet on the andirons, half enveloped in his nine-leaved Coromandel screen, sitting at a table on which two candles burned under a green shade, swallowed up in his needle-worked easy-chair, and holding a book in his hand, which he was not reading. He was dressed, according to his mode, as an "Incroyable," and resembled an old portrait of Garat. This would have caused him to be followed in the streets; but whenever he went out, his daughter wrapped him up in a sort of episcopal wadded coat, which hid his clothing. At home he never wore a dressing-gown, save when he got up and went to bed. "It gives an old look," he was wont to say. Father Gillenormand was thinking of Marius bitterly and lovingly, and, as usual, bitterness gained the upper hand. His savage tenderness always ended by boiling over and turning into indignation, and he was at the stage when a man seeks to make up his mind and accept that which lacerates. He was explaining to himself that there was no longer any reason for Marius's return, that if he had meant to come home he would have done so long before, and all idea of it must be given up. He tried to form the idea that it was all over, and that he should die without seeing that "gentleman" again. But his whole nature revolted, and his old paternity could not consent. "What," he said, and it was his mournful burden, "he will not come back!" and his old bald fell on his chest, and he vaguely fixed a lamentable and irritated glance upon the ashes on his hearth. In the depth of this reverie his old servant Basque came in and asked,—
"Can you receive M. Marius, sir?"
The old man sat up, livid, and like a corpse which is roused by a galvanic shock. All his blood flowed to his heart, and he stammered,—
"M. Marius! Who?"
"I do not know," Basque replied, intimidated and disconcerted by his master's air, "for I did not see him. It was Nicolette who said to me just now, 'There is a young man here; say it is M. Marius.'"
Father Gillenormand stammered in a low voice, "Show him in."
And he remained in the same attitude, with hanging head and eye fixed on the door. It opened, and a young man appeared; it was Marius, who stopped in the doorway as if waiting to be asked in. His almost wretched clothes could not be seen in the obscurity produced by the shade, and only his calm, grave, but strangely sorrowful face could be distinguished. Father Gillenormand, as if stunned by stupor and joy, remained for a few minutes seeing nothing but a brilliancy, as when an apparition rises before us. He was ready to faint, and perceived Marius through a mist. It was really he, it was really Marius! At length, after four years! He took him in entirely, so to speak, at a glance, and found him handsome, noble, distinguished, grown, a thorough man, with a proper attitude and a charming air. He felt inclined to open his arms and call the boy to him, his bowels were swelled with ravishment, affectionate words welled up and overflowed his bosom. At length all this tenderness burst forth and reached his lips, and through the contrast which formed the basis of his character a harshness issued from it. He said roughly,—
"What do you want here?"
Marius replied with an embarrassed air,—
"Sir—"
Monsieur Gillenormand would have liked for Marius to throw himself into his arms, and he was dissatisfied both with Marius and himself. He felt that he was rough and Marius cold, and it was an insupportable and irritating anxiety to the old gentleman to feel himself so tender and imploring within, and unable to be otherwise than harsh externally. His bitterness returned, and he abruptly interrupted Marius.
"In that case, why do you come?"
The "in that case" meant "if you have not come to embrace me," Marius gazed at his ancestor's marble face.
"Sir—"
The old gentleman resumed in a stern voice,—
"Have you come to ask my pardon? Have you recognized your error?"
He believed that he was putting Marius on the right track, and that "the boy" was going to give way. Marius trembled, for it was a disavowal of his father that was asked of him, and he lowered his eyes and replied, "No, sir."
"Well, in that case," the old man exclaimed impetuously, and with a sharp sorrow full of anger, "what is it you want of me?"
Marius clasped his hands, advanced a step, and said, in a weak, trembling voice,—
"Take pity on me, sir."
This word moved M. Gillenormand; had it come sooner it would have softened him, but it came too late. The old gentleman rose, and rested both hands on his cane; his lips were white, his forehead shook, but his lofty stature towered over the stooping Marius.
"Pity on you, sir! The young man asks pity of an old man of ninety-one! You are entering life, and I am leaving it; you go to the play, to balls, to the coffee-house, the billiard-table; you are witty, you please women, you are a pretty fellow, while I spit on my logs in the middle of summer; you are rich with the only wealth there is, while I have all the poverty of old age, infirmity, and isolation. You have your two-and-thirty teeth, a good stomach, a quick eye, strength, appetite, health, gayety, a forest of black hair, while I have not even my white hair left. I have lost my teeth, I am losing my legs, I am losing my memory, for there are three names of streets which I incessantly confound,—the Rue Charlot, the Rue du Chaume, and the Rue St. Claude. Such is my state; you have a whole future before you, full of sunshine, while I am beginning to see nothing, as I have advanced so far into night. You are in love, that is a matter of course, while I am not beloved by a soul in the world, and yet you ask me for pity! By Jove! Molière forgot that. If that is the way in which you lawyers jest at the palais, I compliment you most sincerely upon it, for you are droll fellows."
And the octogenarian added, in a serious and wrathful voice,—
"Well; what is it you want of me?"
"I am aware, sir," said Marius, "that my presence here displeases you; but I have only come to ask one thing of you, and then I shall go away at once."
"You are a fool!" the old man said. "Who told you to go away?"
This was the translation of the tender words which he had at the bottom of his heart. "Ask my pardon, why don't you? and throw your arms round my neck." M. Gillenormand felt that Marius was going to leave him in a few moments, that his bad reception offended him, and that his harshness expelled him; he said all this to himself, and his grief was augmented by it, and as his grief immediately turned into passion his harshness grew the greater. He had wished that Marius should understand, and Marius did not understand, which rendered the old gentleman furious. He continued,—
"What! you insulted me, your grandfather; you left my house to go the Lord knows whither; you broke your aunt's heart; you went away to lead a bachelor's life,—of course that's more convenient,—to play the fop, come home at all hours, and amuse yourself; you have given me no sign of life; you have incurred debts without even asking me to pay them; you have been a breaker of windows and a brawler; and at the end of four years you return to my house and have nothing more to say to me than that!"
This violent way of forcing the grandson into tenderness only produced silence on the part of Marius. M. Gillenormand folded his arms,—a gesture which with him was peculiarly imperious,—and bitterly addressed Marius,—
"Let us come to an end. You have come to ask something of me, you say. Well, what is it? Speak!"
"Sir," said Marius, with the look of a man who feels that he is going to fall over a precipice, "I have come to ask your permission to marry."
M. Gillenormand rang the bell, and Basque poked his head into the door.
"Send my daughter here."
A second later the door opened again, and Mlle. Gillenormand did not enter, but showed herself. Marius was standing silently, with drooping arms and the face of a criminal, while M. Gillenormand walked up and down the room. He turned to his daughter and said to her,—
"It is nothing. This is M. Marius; wish him good-evening. This gentleman desires to marry That will do. Be off!"
The sound of the old man's sharp, hoarse voice announced a mighty fury raging within him. The aunt looked at Marius in terror, seemed scarce to recognize him, did not utter a syllable, and disappeared before her father's breath like a straw before a hurricane. In the mean while M. Gillenormand had turned back, and was now leaning against the mantel-piece.
"You marry! at the age of one-and-twenty! You have settled all that, and have only a permission to ask, a mere formality! Sit down, sir. Well, you have had a revolution since I had the honor of seeing you last; the Jacobins had the best of it, and you are of course pleased. Are you not a republican since you became a baron? Those two things go famously together, and the republic is a sauce for the barony. Are you one of the decorated of July? Did you give your small aid to take the Louvre, sir? Close by, in the Rue St. Antoine, opposite the Rue des Nonaindières, there is a cannon-ball imbedded in the wall of a house three stories up, with the inscription, 'July 28, 1830.' Go and look at it, for it produces a famous effect. Ah! your friends do very pretty things! By the way, are they not erecting a fountain on the site of the Duc de Berry's monument? So you wish to marry? May I ask, without any indiscretion, who the lady is?"
He stopped, and before Marius had time to answer, he added violently,—
"Ah! have you a profession, a fortune? How much do you earn by your trade as a lawyer?"
"Nothing," said Marius, with a sort of fierceness and almost stern resolution.
"Nothing? Then you have only the twelve hundred livres which I allow you to live on?"
Marius made no reply, and M. Gillenormand continued,—
"In that case, I presume that the young lady is wealthy?"
"Like myself."
"What! no dowry?"
"No."
"Any expectations?"
"I do not think so."
"Quite naked! And what is the father?"
"I do not know."
"And what is her name?"
"Mademoiselle Fauchelevent."
"Mademoiselle Fauchewhat?"
"Fauchelevent."
"Ptt!" said the old gentleman.—
"Monsieur!" Marius exclaimed.
M. Gillenormand interrupted him, with the air of a man who is talking to himself,—
"That is it, one-and-twenty, no profession, twelve hundred livres a year, and the Baroness Pontmercy will go and buy two sous' worth of parsley at the green-grocer's!"
"Sir," Marius replied in the wildness of the last vanishing hope, "I implore you, I conjure you in Heaven's name, with clasped hands I throw myself at your feet,—sir, permit me to marry her!"
The old man burst into a sharp, melancholy laugh, through which he coughed and spoke,—
"Ah, ah, ah! you said to yourself, 'I'll go and see that old periwig, that absurd ass! What a pity that I am not five-and-twenty yet! how I would send him a respectful summons! Old fool, you are too glad to see me; I feel inclined to marry Mamselle Lord-knows-who, the daughter of Monsieur Lord-knows-what. She has no shoes and I have no shirt; that matches. I am inclined to throw into the river my career, my youth, my future, my life, and take a plunge into wretchedness with a wife round my neck—that is my idea, and you must consent:' and the old fossil will consent. Go in, my lad, fasten your paving-stone round your neck, marry your Pousselevent, your Coupelevent,—never, sir, never!"
"Father—"
"Never!"
Marius lost all hope through the accent with which this "never" was pronounced. He crossed the room slowly, with hanging head, tottering, and more like a man that is dying than one who is going away. M. Gillenormand looked after him, and at the moment when the door opened and Marius was about to leave the room he took four strides with the senile vivacity of an impetuous and spoiled old man, seized Marius by the collar, pulled him back energetically into the room, threw him into an easy-chair, and said,—
"Tell me all about it."
The word father which had escaped from Marius's lips produced this revolution. Marius looked at M. Gillenormand haggardly, but his inflexible face expressed nought now but a rough and ineffable goodness. The ancestor had made way for the grandfather.
"Well, speak; tell me of your love episodes, tell me all. Sapristi! how stupid young men are!"
"My father!" Marius resumed.
The old gentleman's entire face was lit up with an indescribable radiance.
"Yes, that is it, call me father, and you'll see."
There was now something so gentle, so good, so open, and so paternal in this sharpness, that Marius, in this sudden passage from discouragement to hope, was, as it were, stunned and intoxicated. As he was seated near the table the light of the candles fell on his seedy attire, which Father Gillenormand studied with amazement.
"Well, father," said Marius.
"What!" M. Gillenormand interrupted him, "have you really no money? You are dressed like a thief."
He felt in a drawer and pulled out a purse, which he laid on the table.
"Here are one hundred louis to buy a hat with."
"My father," Marius continued, "my kind father. If you only knew how I love her! You cannot imagine it. The first time I saw her was at the Luxembourg, where she came to walk. At the beginning I paid no great attention to her, and then I know not how it happened, but I fell in love with her. Oh, how wretched it made me! I see her now every day at her own house, and her father knows nothing about it. Just fancy, they are going away; we see each other at night in the garden; her father means to take her to England; and then I said to myself, 'I will go and see my grandfather and tell him about it.' I should go mad first, I should die, I should have a brain fever, I should throw myself into the water. I must marry her, or else I shall go mad. That is the whole truth, and I do not believe that I have forgotten anything. She lives in a garden with a railing to it, in the Rue Plumet: it is on the side of the Invalides."
Father Gillenormand was sitting radiantly by Marius's side: while listening and enjoying the sound of his voice he enjoyed at the same time a lengthened pinch of snuff. At the words "Rue Plumet" he broke off inhaling, and allowed the rest of the snuff to fall on his knees.
"Rue Plumet! Did you say Rue Plumet? Only think! Is there not a barrack down there? Oh yes, of course there is: your cousin Théodule, the officer, the lancer, told me about it—a little girl, my dear fellow, a little girl! By Jove! yes, Rue Plumet, which used formerly to be called Rue Blomet. I remember it all now, and I have heard about the petite behind the railings in the Rue Plumet. In a garden, a Pamela. Your taste is not bad. I am told she is very tidy. Between ourselves, I believe that ass of a lancer has courted her a little; I do not exactly know how far matters have gone, but, after all, that is of no consequence. Besides, there is no believing him; he boasts. Marius, I think it very proper that a young man like you should be in love, for it becomes your age, and I would sooner have you in love than a Jacobin. I would rather know you caught by a petticoat, ay, by twenty petticoats, than by Monsieur de Robespierre. For my part, I do myself the justice of saying that, as regards sans-culottes, I never loved any but women. Pretty girls are pretty girls, hang it all! and there is no harm in that. And so she receives you behind her father's back, does she? That's all right, and I had affairs of the same sort, more than one. Do you know what a man does in such cases? He does not regard the matter ferociously, he does not hurl himself into matrimony, or conclude with marriage and M. le Maire in his scarf. No, he is, although foolish, a youth of spirits and of good sense. Glide, mortals, but do not marry. Such a young man goes to his grandfather, who is well inclined after all, and who has always a few rolls of louis in an old drawer, and he says to him, 'Grandpapa, that's how matters stand;' and grandpapa says, 'It is very simple; youth must make and old age break. I have been young and you will be old. All right, my lad, you will requite it to your grandson. Here are two hundred pistoles; go and amuse yourself, confound you!' That is the way in which the matter should be arranged; a man does not marry, but that is no obstacle: do you understand?"
Marius, petrified and incapable of uttering a word, shook his head in the negative. The old gentleman burst into a laugh, winked his aged eyelid, tapped him on the knee, looked at him in both eyes with a mysterious and radiant air, and said with the tenderest shrug of the shoulders possible,—
"You goose! make her your mistress!"
Marius turned pale; he had understood nothing of what his grandfather had been saying, and this maundering about the Rue Blomet, Pamela, the barracks, the lancer, had passed before Marius like a phantasmagoria. Nothing of all this could affect Cosette, who was a lily, and the old gentleman was wandering. But this divagation had resulted in a sentence which Marius understood, and which was a mortal insult to Cosette, and the words, Make her your mistress, passed through the pure young man's heart like a sword-blade. He rose, picked up his hat which was on the ground, and walked to the door with a firm, assured step. Then he turned, gave his grandfather a low bow, drew himself up again, and said,—
"Five years ago you outraged my father; to-day you outrage my wife. I have nothing more to ask of you, sir; farewell!"
Father Gillenormand, who was stupefied, opened his mouth, stretched out his arms, strove to rise, and ere he was able to utter a word, the door had closed again, and Marius had disappeared. The old gentleman remained for a few minutes motionless, and as if thunderstruck, unable to speak or breathe, as though a garroter's hand were compressing his throat. At length he tore himself out of his easy-chair, ran to the door as fast as a man can run at ninety-one, opened it, and cried,—
"Help! help!"
His daughter appeared, and then his servants; he went on with a lamentable rattle in his throat,—
"Run after him! catch him up! How did I offend him? He is mad and going away! Oh Lord, oh Lord! this time he will not return."
He went to the window which looked on the street, opened it with his old trembling hands, bent half his body out of it, while Basque and Nicolette held his skirts, and cried,—
"Marius! Marius! Marius! Marius!"
But Marius could not hear him, for at this very moment he was turning the corner of the Rue St. Louis. The nonagenarian raised his hands twice or thrice to his temples with an expression of agony, tottered back, and sank into an easy-chair, pulseless, voiceless, and tearless, shaking his head and moving his lips with a stupid air, and having nothing left in his eyes or heart but a profound and gloomy rigidity which resembled night.
That same day, about four in the afternoon, Jean Valjean was seated on one of the most solitary slopes of the Champ de Mars. Either through prudence, a desire to reflect, or simply in consequence of one of those insensible changes of habits which gradually introduce themselves into all existences, he now went out very rarely with Cosette. He had on his workman's jacket and gray canvas trousers, and his long peaked cap concealed his face. He was at present calm and happy by Cosette's side; what had startled and troubled him for a while was dissipated; but during the last week or fortnight anxieties of a fresh nature had sprung up. One day, while walking along the boulevard, he noticed Thénardier; thanks to his disguise, Thénardier did not recognize him, but after that Jean Valjean saw him several times again, and now felt a certainty that Thénardier was prowling about the quarter. This was sufficient to make him form a grand resolution, for Thénardier present was every peril at once; moreover, Paris was not quiet, and political troubles offered this inconvenience to any man who had something in his life to hide,—that the police had become very restless and suspicious, and when trying to find a man like Pepin or Morey, might very easily discover a man like Jean Valjean. He therefore resolved to leave Paris, even France, and go to England; he had warned Cosette, and hoped to be off within a week. He was sitting on the slope, revolving in his mind all sorts of thoughts,—Thénardier, the police, the journey, and the difficulty of obtaining a passport. From all these points of view he was anxious; and lastly, an inexplicable fact, which had just struck him, and from which he was still hot, added to his alarm. On the morning of that very day he, the only person up in the house, and walking in the garden before Cosette's shutters were opened, suddenly perceived this line on the wall, probably scratched with a nail, 16 Rue de la Verrerie.
It was quite recent; the lines were white on the old black mortar, and a bed of nettles at the foot of the wall was powdered with fine fresh plaster. This had probably been inscribed during the night. What was it,—an address, a signal for others, or a warning for himself? In any case, it was evident that the secrecy of the garden was violated, and that strangers entered it. He remembered the strange incidents which had already alarmed the house, and his mind was at work on this subject; but he was careful not to say a word to Cosette about the line written on the wall, for fear of alarming her. In the midst of his troubled thoughts he perceived, from a shadow which the sun threw, that some one was standing on the crest of the slope immediately behind him. He was just going to turn, when a folded paper fell on his knees, as if a hand had thrown it over his head; he opened the paper and read these words, written in large characters, and in pencil: LEAVE YOUR HOUSE.
Jean Valjean rose smartly, but there was no longer any one on the slope; he looked round him, and perceived a person, taller than a child and shorter than a man, dressed in a gray blouse and dust-colored cotton-velvet trousers, bestriding the parapet, and slipping down into the moat of the Champ de Mars. Jean Valjean at once went home very thoughtfully.
Marius had left M. Gillenormand's house in a wretched state; he had gone in with very small hopes, and came out with an immense despair. However,—those who have watched the beginnings of the human heart will comprehend it,—the lancer, the officer, the fop, cousin Théodule, had left no shadow on his mind, not the slightest. The dramatic poet might apparently hope for some complications to be produced by this revelation, so coarsely made to the grandson by the grandfather; but what the drama would gain by it truth would lose. Marius was at that age when a man believes nothing that is wrong; later comes the age when he believes everything. Suspicions are only wrinkles, and early youth has none; what o'erthrows Othello glides over Candide. Suspect Cosette? Marius could have committed a multitude of crimes more easily. He began walking about the streets, the resource of those who suffer, and he thought of nothing which he might have remembered. At two in the morning he went to Courfeyrac's lodging and threw himself on his mattress full dressed; it was bright sunshine when he fell asleep, with that frightful oppressive sleep which allows ideas to come and go in the brain. When he awoke he saw Courfeyrac, Enjolras, Feuilly, and Combeferre, all ready to go out, and extremely busy. Courfeyrac said to him,—
"Are you coming to General Lamarque's funeral?"
It seemed to him as if Courfeyrac were talking Chinese. He went out shortly after them, and put in his pockets the pistols which Javert had intrusted to him at the affair of February 3, and which still remained in his possession. They were still loaded, and it would be difficult to say what obscure notion he had in his brain when he took them up. The whole day he wandered about, without knowing where; it rained at times, but he did not perceive it; he bought for his dinner a halfpenny roll, put it in his pocket, and forgot it. It appears that he took a bath in the Seine without being conscious of it, for there are moments when a man has a furnace under his skull, and Marius had reached one of those moments. He hoped for nothing, feared nothing now, and had taken this step since the previous day. He awaited the evening with a feverish impatience, for he had but one clear idea left, that at nine o'clock he should see Cosette. This last happiness was now his sole future; after that came the shadow. At times, while walking along the most deserted boulevards, he imagined that he could hear strange noises in Paris; then he thrust his head out of his reverie, and said,—"Can they be fighting?" At nightfall, at nine o'clock precisely, he was at the Rue Plumet, as he had promised Cosette. He had not seen her for eight-and-forty hours; he was about to see her again. Every other thought was effaced, and he only felt an extraordinary and profound joy. Those minutes in which men live ages have this sovereign and admirable thing about them, that at the moment when they pass they entirely occupy the heart.
Marius removed the railing and rushed into the garden. Cosette was not at the place where she usually waited for him, and he crossed the garden and went to the niche near the terrace. "She is waiting for me there," he said; but Cosette was not there. He raised his eyes and saw that the shutters of the house were closed; he walked round the garden, and the garden was deserted. Then he returned to the garden, and, mad with love, terrified, exasperated with grief and anxiety, he rapped at the shutters, like a master who returns home at a late hour. He rapped, he rapped again, at the risk of seeing the window open and the fathers frowning face appear and ask him,—"What do you want?" This was nothing to what he caught a glimpse of. When he had rapped, he raised his voice, and called Cosette. "Cosette!" he cried: "Cosette!" he repeated imperiously. There was no answer. It was all over; there was no one in the garden, no one in the house. Marius fixed his desperate eyes on this mournful house, which was as black, as silent, and more empty, than a tomb. He gazed at the stone bench on which he had spent so many adorable hours by Cosette's side; then he sat down on the garden steps, with his heart full of gentleness and resolution; he blessed his love in his heart, and said to himself that since Cosette was gone all left him was to die. All at once he heard a voice which seemed to come from the street, crying through the trees,—
"Monsieur Marius!"
He drew himself up.
"Hilloh!" he said.
"Monsieur Marius, are you there?"
"Yes."
"Monsieur Marius," the voice resumed, "your friends are waiting for you at the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie."
This voice was not entirely strange to him, and resembled Éponine's rough, hoarse accents. Marius ran to the railings, pulled aside the shifting bar, passed his head through, and saw some one, who seemed to be a young man, running away in the gloaming.
Jean Valjean's purse was useless to M. Mabœuf, who in his venerable childish austerity had not accepted the gift of the stars; he had not allowed that a star could coin itself into louis d'or, and he had not guessed that what fell from heaven came from Gavroche. Hence he carried the purse to the police commissary of the district, as a lost object, placed by the finder at the disposal of the claimants. The purse was really lost; we need hardly say that no one claimed it, and it did not help M. Mabœuf. In other respects M. Mabœuf had continued to descend: and the indigo experiments had succeeded no better at the Jardin des Plantes than in his garden of Austerlitz. The previous year he owed his housekeeper her wages; and now, as we have seen, he owed his landlord his rent. The Government pawn-brokers' office sold the copper-plates of his Flora, at the expiration of thirteen months, and a coppersmith had made stewpans of them. When his plates had disappeared, as he could no longer complete the unbound copies of his Flora, which he still possessed, he sold off plates and text to a second-hand bookseller as defective. Nothing was then left him of the labor of his whole life, and he began eating the money produced by these copies. When he saw that this poor resource was growing exhausted be gave up his garden, and did not attend to it; before, and long before, he had given up the two eggs and the slice of beef which he ate from time to time, and now dined on bread and potatoes. He had sold his last articles of furniture, then everything; he had in duplicate, in linen, clothes, and coverlids, and then his herbals and plates; but he still had his most precious books, among them being several of great rarity, such as the "Les Quadrins Historiques de la Bible," the edition of 1560; "La Concordance des Bibles," of Pierre de Besse; "Les Marguerites de la Marguerite," of Jean de la Haye, with a dedication to the Queen of Navarre; the work on the "Duties and Dignity of an Ambassador," by the Sieur de Villiers Hotman; a "Florilegium Rabbinicum," of 1644; a Tibullus, of 1567, with the splendid imprint "Venetiis, in ædibus Manutianis;" and lastly a Diogenes Laertius, printed at Lyons in 1644, in which were the famous various readings of the Vatican manuscript 411, of the thirteenth century, and those of the two Venetian codices 393 and 394, so usefully consulted by Henri Estienne, and all the passages in the Doric dialect, only to be found in the celebrated twelfth century manuscript of the Naples library. M. Mabœuf never lit a fire in his room, and went to bed with the sun, in order not to burn a candle: it seemed as if he no longer had neighbors, for they shunned him when he went out, and he noticed it. The wretchedness of a child interests a mother, the wretchedness of a youth interests an old man, but the wretchedness of an old man interests nobody, and it is the coldest of all distresses. Still M. Mabœuf had not entirely lost his childlike serenity; his eye acquired some vivacity when it settled on his books, and he smiled when he regarded the Diogenes Laertius, which was a unique copy. His glass case was the only furniture which he had retained beyond what was indispensable. One day Mother Plutarch said to him,—
"I have no money to buy dinner with."
What she called dinner consisted of a loaf and four or five potatoes.
"Can't you get it on credit?" said M. Mabœuf.
"You know very well that it is refused me."
M. Mabœuf opened his bookcase, looked for a long time at all his books in turn, as a father, obliged to decimate his children, would look at them before selecting, then took one up quickly, put it under his arm, and went out. He returned two hours after with nothing under his arm, laid thirty sous on the table, and said,—
"You will get some dinner."
From this moment Mother Plutarch saw a dark veil, which was not raised again, settle upon the old gentleman's candid face. The next day, the next after that, and every day, M. Mabœuf had to begin again; he went out with a book and returned with a piece of silver. As the second-hand booksellers saw that he was compelled to sell, they bought for twenty sous books for which he had paid twenty francs, and frequently to the same dealers. Volume by volume his whole library passed away, and he said at times, "And yet I am eighty years of age," as if he had some lurking hope that he should reach the end of his days ere he reached the end of his books. His sorrow grew, but once he had a joy: he went out with a Robert Estienne, which he sold for thirty-five sous on the Quai Malaquais, and came home with an Aldus which he had bought for forty sous in the Rue de Grès. "I owe five sous," he said quite radiantly to Mother Plutarch, but that day he did not dine. He belonged to the Horticultural Society, and his poverty was known. The President of the Society called on him, promised to speak about him to the Minister of Commerce and Agriculture, and did so. "What do you say?" the minister exclaimed. "I should think so! an old savant! a botanist! an inoffensive man! we must do something for him." The next day M. Mabœuf received an invitation to dine with the minister, and, trembling with joy, showed the letter to Mother Plutarch. "We are saved!" he said. On the appointed day he went to the minister's, and noticed that his ragged cravat, his long, square-cut coat, and shoes varnished with white of egg, astounded the footman. No one spoke to him, not even the minister, and at about ten in the evening, while still waiting for a word, he heard the minister's wife, a handsome lady in a low-necked dress, whom he had not dared to approach, ask, "Who can that old gentleman be?" He went home afoot at midnight through the pouring rain; he had sold an Elzevir to pay his hackney coach in going.
Every evening, before going to bed, he had fallen into the habit of reading a few pages of his Diogenes Laertius; for he knew enough of Greek to enjoy the peculiarities of the text which he possessed, and had no other joy now left him. A few weeks passed away, and all at once Mother Plutarch fell ill. There is one thing even more sad than having no money to buy bread at a baker's, and that is, not to have money to buy medicine at the chemist's. One night the doctor had ordered a most expensive potion, and then the disease grew worse, and a nurse was necessary. M. Mabœuf opened his bookcase, but there was nothing left in it; the last volume had departed, and the only thing left him was the Diogenes Laertius. He placed the unique copy under his arm and went out,—it was June 4, 1832; he proceeded to Royol's successor at the Porte St. Jacques, and returned with one hundred francs. He placed the pile of five-franc pieces on the old servant's table? and entered his bedroom without uttering a syllable. At dawn of the next day he seated himself on the overturned post in his garden, and over the hedge he might have been seen the whole morning, motionless, with drooping head, and eyes vaguely fixed on the faded flower-beds. It rained every now and then, but the old man did not seem to notice it; but in the afternoon extraordinary noises broke out in Paris, resembling musket-shots, and the clamor of a multitude. Father Mabœuf raised his head, noticed a gardener passing, and said,—
"What is the matter?"
The gardener replied, with the spade on his back, and with the most peaceful accent,—
"It's the riots."
"What! Riots?"
"Yes; they are fighting."
"Why are they fighting?"
"The Lord alone knows," said the gardener.
"In what direction?"
"Over by the arsenal."
Father Mabœuf went into his house, took his hat, mechanically sought for a book to place under his arm, found none, said, "Ah, it is true!" and went out with a wandering look.
Of what is a revolt composed? Of nothing and of everything, of an electricity suddenly disengaged, of a flame which suddenly breaks out, of a wandering strength and a passing breath. This breath meets with heads that talk, brains that dream, souls that suffer, passions that burn, and miseries which yell, and carries them off with it. Whither? It is chance work; through the State, through the laws, through prosperity and the insolence of others. Irritated convictions, embittered enthusiasms, aroused indignations, martial instincts suppressed, youthful courage exalted, and generous blindnesses; curiosity, a taste for a change, thirst for something unexpected, the feeling which causes us to find pleasure in reading the announcement of a new piece, or on hearing the machinist's whistle; vague hatreds, rancors, disappointments, every vanity which believes that destiny has been a bankrupt to it; straitened circumstances, empty dreams, ambitions surrounded with escarpments, every man who hopes for an issue from an overthrow, and, lastly, at the very bottom, the mob, that mud which takes fire,—such are the elements of riot. The greatest and the most infamous, beings who prowl about beyond the pale of everything while awaiting an opportunity, gypsies, nameless men, highway vagabonds, the men who sleep o' nights in a desert of houses with no other roof but the cold clouds of heaven, those who daily ask their bread of chance and not of toil; the unknown men of wretchedness and nothingness, bare arms and bare feet, belong to the riot. Every man who has in his soul a secret revolt against any act of the State, of life, or of destiny, borders on riot; and so soon as it appears he begins to quiver and to feel himself lifted by the whirlwind.
Riot is a species of social atmospheric waterspout, which is suddenly formed in certain conditions of temperature, and which in its revolutions mounts, runs, thunders, tears up, razes, crushes, demolishes, and uproots, bearing with it grand and paltry natures, the strong man and the weak mind, the trunk of a tree and the wisp of straw. Woe to the man whom it carries as well as to the one it dashes at, for it breaks one against the other. It communicates to those whom it seizes a strange and extraordinary power; it fills the first comer with the force of events and converts everything into projectiles; it makes a cannon-ball of a stone, and a general of a porter. If we may believe certain oracles of the crafty policy, a little amount of riot is desirable from the governing point of view. The system is, that riot strengthens those governments which it does not overthrow; it tries the army; it concentrates the bourgeoisie, strengthens the muscles of the police, and displays the force of the social framework. It is a lesson in gymnastics, and almost hygiene; and power feels better after a riot, as a man does after a rubbing down. Riot, thirty years ago, was also regarded from other stand-points. There is for everything a theory which proclaims itself as "common sense," a mediation offered between the true and the false: explanation, admonition, and a somewhat haughty extenuation which, because it is composed of blame and apology, believes itself wisdom, and is often nothing but pedantry. An entire political school, called the "Juste milieu," emanated from this, and between cold water and hot water there is the lukewarm-water party. This school, with its false depth entirely superficial, which dissects effects without going back to causes, scolds, from the elevation of semi-science, the agitations of the public streets.
If we listen to this school we hear: "The riots which complicated the deed of 1830 deprived that grand event of a portion of its purity. The revolution of July was a fine blast of the popular wind, suddenly followed by a blue sky, and the riot caused a cloudy sky to reappear, and compelled the revolution, originally so remarkable through unanimity, to degenerate into a quarrel. In the revolution of July, as in every progress produced by a jerk, there were secret fractures; the riot rendered them perceptible. After the revolution of July only the deliverance was felt, but after the riots the catastrophe was felt. Every riot closes shops, depresses the funs, consternates the Stock Exchange, suspends trade, checks business, and entails bankruptcies; there is no money, trade is disconcerted, capital is withdrawn, labor is at a discount, there is fear everywhere, and counter-strokes take place in every city, whence come gulfs. It is calculated that the first day of riot costs France twenty millions of francs, the second forty, and the third sixty. Hence a riot of three days costs one hundred and twenty millions; that is to say, if we only regard the financial result, is equivalent to a disaster, shipwreck, or lost action, which might annihilate a fleet of sixty vessels of the line. Indubitably, riots, historically regarded, had their beauty; the war of the paving-stones is no less grand or pathetic than the war of thickets; in the one there is the soul of forests, in the other the heart of cities; one has Jean Chouan, the other has Jeanne. Riots lit up luridly but splendidly all the most original features of the Parisian character,—generosity, devotion, stormy gayety, students proving that bravery forms a part of intellect, the National Guard unswerving, bivouacs formed by shop-keepers, fortresses held by gamins, and contempt of death in the passers-by. Schools and legions came into collision, but, after all, there was only the difference of age between the combatants, and they are the same race; the same stoical men who die at the age of twenty for their ideas, and at forty for their families; the army, ever sad in civil wars, opposed prudence to audacity; and the riots, while manifesting the popular intrepidity, were the education of the bourgeois courage. That is all very well, but is all this worth the blood shed? And then add to the bloodshed the future darkened, progress compromised, anxiety among the better classes, honest liberals despairing, foreign absolutism delighted at these wounds dealt to revolution by itself, and the conquered of 1830 triumphing and shouting, 'Did we not say so?' Add Paris possibly aggrandized, France assuredly diminished. Add—for we must tell the whole truth—the massacres which too often dishonored the victory of order, which became ferocious, over liberty which went mad, and we must arrive at the conclusion that riots have been fatal."
Thus speaks that wisdom, almost, with which the bourgeoisie, that people, almost, are so readily contented. For our part, we regret the word riots as being too wide, and consequently too convenient, and make a distinction between one popular movement and another; we do not ask ourselves whether a riot costs as much as a battle. In the first place, why a battle? Here the question of war arises. Is war less a scourge than riot is a calamity? And then, are all riots calamities? And even supposing that July 14 cost one hundred and twenty millions, the establishment of Philip V. in Spain cost France two billions, and even were the price equal we should prefer the 14th July. Besides, we reject these figures, which seem reasons and are only words, and a riot being given, we examine it in itself. In all that the doctrinaire objection we have just reproduced says, the only question is the effect, and we seek for the cause.
There is riot, and there is insurrection; they are two passions, one of which is just, the other unjust. In democratic States, the only ones based on justice, it sometimes happens that the fraction usurps power; in that case the whole people rises, and the necessary demand for its rights may go so far as taking up arms. In all the questions which result from collective sovereignty, the war of all against the fraction is insurrection, and the attack of the fraction on the masses is a riot; according as the Tuileries contain the king or the convention, they are justly or unjustly attacked. The same guns pointed at the mob are in the wrong on August 14, and in the right on the 14th Vendémiaire. Their appearance is alike, but the base is different; the Swiss defend what is false, and Bonaparte what is true. What universal suffrage has done in its liberty and its sovereignty cannot be undone by the street. It is the same in matters of pure civilization, and the instinct of the masses, clear-sighted yesterday, may be perturbed to-morrow. The same fury is legitimate against Terray and absurd against Turgot. Smashing engines, pillaging store-houses, tearing up rails, the demolition of docks, the wrong ways of multitudes, the denial of popular justice to progress, Ramus assassinated by the scholars, and Rousseau expelled from Switzerland by stones,—all this is riot Israel rising against Moses, Athens against Phocion, Rome against Scipio, are riots, while Paris attacking the Bastille is insurrection. The soldiers opposing Alexander, the sailors mutinying against Christopher Columbus, are the same revolt,—an impious revolt; why? Because Alexander does for Asia with the sword what Columbus does for America with the compass; Alexander, like Columbus, finds a world. These gifts of a world to civilization are such increments of light, that any resistance in such a case is culpable. At times the people breaks its fidelity to itself, and the mob behaves treacherously to the people. Can anything, for instance, be stranger than the long and sanguinary protest of the false salt-makers, a legitimate chronic revolt which at the decisive moment, on the day of salvation, and in the hour of the popular victory, espouses the throne, turns into chouannerie, and from an insurrection against the government becomes a riot for it? These are gloomy masterpieces of ignorance. The false salt-maker escapes from the royal gallows, and with the noose still round his neck mounts the white cockade. "Death to the salt taxes" brings into the world, "Long live the king." The killers of St. Bartholomew, the murderers of September, the massacrers of Avignon, the assassins of Coligny, of Madame de Lamballe, the assassins of Brune, the Miquelets, the Verdets, and the Cadenettes, the Companions of Jehu, and the Chevaliers du Brassard,—all this is riot. The Vendée is a grand Catholic riot The sound of right in motion can be recognized, and it does not always come from the trembling of the overthrown masses; there are mad furies and cracked bells, and all the tocsins do not give the sound of bronze. The commotion of passions and ignorances differs from the shock of progress. Rise, if you like, but only to grow, and show me in what direction you are going, for insurrection is only possible with a forward movement. Any other uprising is bad, every violent step backwards is riot, and recoiling is an assault upon the human race. Insurrection is the outburst of the fury of truth; the paving-stones which insurrection tears up emit the spark of right, and they only leave to riot their mud. Danton rising against Louis XVI. is insurrection; Hébert against Danton is riot.
Hence it comes that if insurrection in given cases may be, as Lafayette said, the most holy of duties, riot may be the most fatal of attacks. There is also some difference in the intensity of caloric; insurrection is often a volcano, a riot often a straw fire. Revolt, as we have said, is sometimes found in the power. Polignac is a rioter, and Camille Desmoulins is a government. At times insurrection is a resurrection. The solution of everything by universal suffrage being an absolutely modern fact, and all history anterior to that fact being for four thousand years filled with violated right and the suffering of the peoples, each epoch of history brings with it the protest which is possible to it. Under the Cæsars there was no insurrection, but there was Juvenal. The facit indignatio takes the place of the Gracchi. Under the Cæsars there is the Exile of Syene, and there is also the man of the "Annals." We will not refer to the immense Exile of Patmos, who also crushes the real world with a protest in the name of the ideal world, converts a vision into an enormous satire, and casts on Rome-Nineveh, Rome-Babylon, and Rome-Sodom the flashing reflection of the Apocalypse. John on his rock is the sphinx on its pedestal. We cannot understand him, for he is a Jew, and writes in Hebrew; but the man who writes the "Annals" is a Latin, or, to speak more correctly, a Roman. As the Neros reign in the black manner, they must be painted in the same. Work produced by the graver alone would be pale, and so a concentrated biting prose must be poured into the lines. Despots are of some service to thinkers, for chained language is terrible language, and the writer doubles and triples his style when silence is imposed by a master on the people. There issues from this silence a certain mysterious fulness which filters and fixes itself in bronze in the thought. Compression in history produces conciseness in the historian, and the granitic solidity of certain celebrated prose is nothing but a pressure put on by the tyrant. Tyranny forces the writer into contraction of the diameter, which is increase of strength. The Ciceronian period, scarce sufficient for Verres, would be blunted upon a Caligula. Though there is less breadth in the sentence, there is more intensity in the blow, and Tacitus thinks with a drawn-back arm. The honesty of a great heart condensed in justice and truth is annihilating.
We must observe, by the way, that Tacitus is not historically superimposed on Cæsar, and the Tiberii are reserved for him. Cæsar and Tacitus are two successive phenomena, whose meeting seems to be mysteriously prevented by Him who regulates the entrances and exits on the stage of centuries. Cæsar is great, Tacitus is great, and God spares these two grandeurs by not bringing them into collision. The judge, in striking Cæsar, might strike too hard and be unjust, and God does not wish that. The great wars of Africa and Spain, the Cilician pirates destroyed, civilization introduced into Gaul, Britain, and Germany,—all this glory covers the Rubicon. There is in this a species of delicacy on the part of divine justice, hesitating to let loose on the illustrious usurper the formidable historian, saving Cæsar from the sentence of a Tacitus, and granting extenuating circumstances to genius. Assuredly despotism remains despotism, even under the despot of genius. There is corruption under illustrious tyrants, but the moral plague is more hideous still under infamous tyrants. In such reigns nothing veils the shame; and the producers of examples, Tacitus like Juvenal, buffet more usefully in the presence of this human race this ignominy, which has no reply to make. Rome smells worse under Vitellius than under Sylla; under Claudius and Domitian there is a deformity of baseness corresponding with the ugliness of the tyrant. The foulness of the slaves is the direct product of the despots; a miasma is extracted from these crouching consciences in which the master is reflected; the public power is unclean, heads are small, consciences flat, and souls vermin; this is the case under Caracalla, Commodus, and Heliogabalus, while from the Roman senate under Cæsar there only issues the smell of dung peculiar to eagles' nests. Hence the apparently tardy arrival of Juvenal and Tacitus, for the demonstrator steps in at the hour for the experiment to be performed.
But Juvenal or Tacitus, like Isaiah in biblical times and Dante in the Middle Ages, is the man; riot, and insurrection are the multitude, which is sometimes wrong, sometimes right. In the most general cases riot issues from a material fact, but insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Riot is Masaniello; insurrection is Spartacus. Insurrection is related to the mind, riot to the stomach; Gaster is irritated, but Gaster is certainly not always in the wrong. In questions of famine, riot, the Buzançais one, for instance, has a true, pathetic, and just starting point, and yet it remains a riot. Why? Because, though right in the abstract, it is wrong in form. Ferocious though legitimate, violent though strong, it has marched haphazard, crushing things in its passage like a blind elephant; it has left behind it the corpses of old men, women, and children, and has shed, without knowing why, the blood of the unoffending and the innocent. Feeding the people is a good end, but massacre is a bad means.