I. WELL CUT

THE years 1831 and 1832, the two years immediately connected with the Revolution of July, are one of
the most peculiar and most striking periods in history. These two years, among those which precede and
those which follow them, are like two mountains. They have the revolutionary grandeur. In them we dis-
cern precipices. In them the social masses, the very strata of civilisation, the conolidated group of
superimposed and cohering interests, the venerable profile of the old French formation, appear and
disappear at every instant through the stormy clouds of systems, passions, and theories. These appear-
ances and disappearances have been named resistance and movement. At intervals we see truth gleaming
forth, that daylight of the human soul.

This remarkable period is short enough, and is beginning to be far enough from us, so that it is hence-
forth possible to catch its principal outlines.

We will make the endeavour.

The Restoration had been one of those intermediate phases, difficult of definition, in which there are
fatigue, buzzings, murmurs, slumber, tumult, and which are nothing more nor less than the arrival of a
great nation at a halting-place. These periods are peculiar, and deceive the politicians who would take
advantage of them. At first, the nation asks only for repose; men have but one thirst, for peace; they
have but one ambition, to be little. That is a translation of being quiet. Great events, great fortunes,
great ventures, great men, thank God, they have seen enough of them; they have been overhead in them.
They would exchange Caesar for Prusias, and Napoleon for the king of Yvetot. "What a good little king
he was!" They have walked since daybreak, it is the evening of a long and rough day; they made the
first relay with Mirabean, the second with Robespierre, the third with Bonaparte, they are thoroughly
exhausted. Every one of them asks for a bed.

Devotions wearied out, heroisms grown old, ambitions full-fed, fortunes made, all seek, demand, implore,
solicit, what? A place to lie down? They have it. They take possession of peace, quietness, and leisure;
they are content. At the same time, however, certain facts arise, compel recognition, and knock at the
door on their side, also. These facts have sprung from revolutions and wars; they exist, they live,
they have a right to instal themselves in society, and they do instal themselves; and the most of the
time the facts are pioneers and quartermasters that merely prepare the ground for principles.

Then, that is what appears to the political philosopher.

At the same time that weary men demand repose, accomplished facts demand guarantees. Guarantees to
facts are the same thing as repose to men.

This is what England demanded of the Stuarts after the Protector; this is what France demanded of the
Bourbons after the empire.

These guarantees are a necessity of the times. They, must be accorded. The princes "grant" them, but
in reality it is the force of circumstances which gives them. A profound truth, and a piece of useful know-
ledge, of which the Stuarts had no suspicion in 1662, and of which the Bourbons had not even a glimpse in
18I4.

The predestined family which returned to France when Napoleon fell, had the fatal simplicity to believe
that it was it that gave and that what it had given it could take back; that the house of Bourbon poss-
essed Divine Right, that France possessed nothing; and that the political rights conceded in the Charter
of Louis XVIII. were only a branch of the divine right, detached by the House of Bourbon, and graciously
given to the people until such day as it should please the king to take it back again. Still, by the regret
which the gift tog them, the Bourbons should have felt that it did not come from than.

They were surly with the nineteenth century. They made a ram face at every development of the nation.
To adopt a trivial Word that is to say, a popular and a true one, they looked glum. The people saw it.

They believed that they were strong, because the empire had been swept away before them like a scene at
a theatre. They did not perceive that they themselves had been brought in in the same way. They did not
see that they also were in that hand which had taken off Napoleon.

They believed that they were rooted because they were the past. They were mistaken; they were a portion
of the past, but the whole past was France. The roots of French society were not in Bourbons but in the
nation. These obscure and undying roots did not constitute the right of a family, but the history of a
people. Mel were everywhere except under the throne.

The house of Bourbon was to France the illustrious and and bloodstained knot of her history, but it was
not the principal element of her destiny, or the essential basis of her politics. She could do without the
Bourbons; she had done without them for twenty-two years; there had been a solution of continuity;
they did not suspect it. And how should they suspect it, they who imagined that Louis XVII reigned on
the 9th of Thermidor, and that Louis XVIII. on the day of Marengo. Never, since the beginning of history,
have princes been so blind to the presence of facts, and of the portion of divine authority which facts
contain and promulgate. Never had that earthly pretension which is called the right of kings, denied the
divine right to such an extent.

A capital error which led that family to lay its hand upon the guarantees "granted" in 1814, upon the con-
cessions, as it called them. Sad thing! what they called their concessions were our conquests; what
they called our encroachments were our rights.

When its hour seemed come, the Restoration, supposing. itself victorious over Bonaparte, and rooted in
the country, that is:to say, thinking itself strong and thinking itself deep, took its resolution a-
bruptly and risked its throw. One morning it rose in the face of France, and, lifting up its voice, it
denied the collective title and the individual title, sovereignty to the nation, liberty to the citi-
zen. In other words, it denied to the nation what made it a nation, and to the citizen what made him
a citizen.

This is the essence of those famous acts which are called the ordinances of July.

The Restoration fell.

It fell justly. We must say, however, that it had not been Apo. hitely hostile to all forms of pro-
gress. Some grand things were 'lone in its presence.

Under the Restoration the nation became accustomed to discussion with calmness, which was want-
ing in the republic; and to grandeur in peace, which was wanting in the empire. France, free and strong,
had been an encouraging spectacle to the other peoples of Europe. The Revolution had had its say
under Robespierre; the cannon had had its say under Bonaparte: under Louis XVIII. and Charles X.
intelligence in its turn found speech. The wind ceased, the torch was relighted. The pure light of
mind was seen trembling upon the serene summits. A magnificent spectacle, full of use and charm.
For fifteen years there were seen at work, in complete peace and openly in public places, these
great principles, so old to the thinker, so new to the statesman: equality before the law, freedom
of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. the accessibility of every function to every
aptitude. This went on thus until 1830. The Bourbons were an instrument of civilisation, which broke
in the hands of Providence.

The fall of the Bourbons was full of grandeur, not on their part, but on the part of the nation. They
left the throne with gravity, but without authority; their descent into the night was not one of those
sudden disappearances which leave a dark emotion to history; it was neither the spectral calmness
of Charles I., nor the eagle cry of Napoleon. They went away, that is all. They laid off the crown, and
did not keep the halo. They were worthy, but they were not august. They fell short, to some extent,
of the majesty of their misfortune. Charles X., during the voyage from Cherbourg, having a round table
cut into a square table, appeared more solicitous of imperilled etiquette than of the falling monarchy.
This pettiness saddened the devoted men who loved them, and the serious men who honoured their
race. The people, for its part, was wonderfully noble. The nation, attacked one morning by force and
arms, by a sort of royal insurrection, felt so strong that it had no anger. It defended itself: re-
strained itself, put things into their places, the government ink the hands of the law, the Bourbons
into exile, alas! and stopped. It took the old king, Charles X., from under that dais which had shel-
tered Louis XIV., and placed him gently on the ground. It touched the royal personages sadly and
with precaution. It was not a man, it was not a few men, it was France, all France, France victor-
ious and intoxicated with her victory, seeming to remember herself, and putting in practice before
the eyes of the whole world these grand words of Guillaume du Vair after the day of the barricades:
"It is easy for those who are accustomed to gather the favours of thegrealt and to leap, like a
bird, from branch to branch, from a grievous to a flourishing fortune. to show themselves bold
towards their prince in his adversity; but to me the fortune of my kings will always be venerable,
and principally when they are in grief."

The Bourbons carried with them respect, but not regret. As we have said, their misfortune was
greater than they. They faded away in the horizon.

The Revolution of July immediately found friends and enemies throughout the world. The former
rushed towards it with enthusiasm and joy, the latter turned away; each according to his own na-
ture. The princes of Europe, at the first moment, owls in this; dawn, closed their eyes, shocked
and stupefied, and opened them only to threaten. A fright which can be understood, an anger which
can be excused. This strange revolution had hardly been a shock; it did not even do vanquished royalty
the honour of treating it as an enemy and shedding its blood. In the eyes of the despotic govern-
ments, always interested that liberty should calumniate herself, the Revolution of July had the fault
of. being formidable and yet being mild. Nothing, however, was attempted, or plotted against it. The
most dissatisfied, the most irritated, the most horrified, bowed to it whatever may be our selfish-
ness and our prejudices, a mysterious respect springs from events in which we feel the interven-
tion of a hand higher than that of man.

The Revolution of July is the triumph of the Right prostrating the fact. A thing full of splendour.

The right prostrating the fact. Thence the glory of the Revolution of 1830, thence its mildness
also. The right, when it triumphs has no need to be violent.

The right is the just and the true.

The peculiarity of the right is that it is always beautiful and pure. The fact, even that which
is most necessary in appearance, even that most accepted by its contemporaries, if it exist only
as fact, and if it contain too little of the right, or none at all, is destined infallibly to become,
in the lapse of time, deformed, unclean, perhaps even monstrous. If you would ascertain at
once what degree of ugliness the fact may reach, seen in the distance of the centuries, look
at Machiavelli. Machiavelli is not an evil genius, nor a demon, nor a cowardly and miserable writer;
he is nothing but the fact. And he is not merely the Italian fact, he is the European fact, the
fact of the sixteenth century. He seems hideous, and he is so, in presence of the moral idea of
the nineteenth.

This conflict of the right and the fact endures from the origin of society. To bring the duel to
an end, to amalgamate the pure ideal with the human reality, to make the right peacefully inter-
penetrate the fact, and the fact the right, this is the work of the wise.

II. BADLY SEWED

BUT the work of the wise is one one thing, the work of the able another.

The Revolution of 1830 soon grounded.

As soon as the revolution strikes the shore, the able carve up the wreck.

The able, in our age. have decreed to themselves the title of statesmen, so that this word,
statesman, has come to be, in some sort, a word of argot.

Indeed. let no one forget, wherever there is ability only, there is necessarily pettiness. To
say "the able," amounts to saying, "mediocrity."

Just as saying, "statesmen," is sometimes equivalent to saying "traitors."

According to the able, therefore, revolutions such as the Revolution of July, are arteries cut:
a prompt ligature is needed. The right. too grandly proclaimed, is disquieting. So, the right once
affirmed, the state must be reaffirmed. Liberty being assured, we must take thought for power.

Thus far the wise did not separate from the able, but they begin to distrust. Power, very well.
But, first. what is power? Secondly, whence comes it.

The able seem not to hear the murmurs of objection. and they continue their work.

According to these politicians, ingenious in putting a mask of neccessity on profitable fictions,
the first need of a people after a revolution, if this people forms part of a monarchical conti-
nent is to procure a dynasty. In this way, say they, it can have peace after its revolution, that
is to say, time to staunch its wounds and to repair its house. The dynasty hides the scaffolding
and covers the ambulance.

Now, it is not always easy to procure a dynasty.

In case of necessity, the first man of genius, or even the first adventurer you meet, suffices
for a king. You have in the first place Bonaparte, and in the second Iturbide.

But the first family you meet with does not suffice to make a dynasty. There must be a certain
amount of antiquity in a race, and the wrinkles of centuries are not extemporised.

If we place ourselves at the statesmen's point of view, of course with every reservation, after
a revolution, what are the qualities of the king who springs from it? He may be, and it is well
that he should be, revolutionary. that is to say, a participant in his own person in this revo-
lution, that he should have taken part in it, that he should be compromised in it, or made illus-
trious, that he should have touched the axe or handled the sword.

What are the qualities of a dynasty? It should be national; that is to say, revolutionary at a
distance, not by acts performed, but by ideas accepted. It should be composed of the past and be
historic. of the future and be sympathetic.

All this explains why the first revolutions content themselves with finding a man, Cromwell or
Napoleon; and why the second absolutely insists on finding a family, the house of Brunswick or
the house of Orleans.

Royal houses resemble those banyan trees of India, each branch of which, by bending to the ground,
takes root there and becomes banyam Each branch may become a dynasty. On the sole condition that
it bend to the people.

Such is the theory of the able.

This, then. is the great art, to give a success something of the sound of a catastrophe, in order
that those who profit by it may tremble also, to moderate a step in advance with fear, to enlarge
the curve of transition to the extent of retarding progress, to tame down this work, to denounce
and restrain the ardencies of enthusiasm, to cut off the corners and the claws, to clog triumph,
to swaddle the debt, to wrap up the people-giant in flannel and hurry him to bed, to impose a diet
upon this excess of health, to put Hercules under convalescent treatment, to hold back the event
within the expedient, to offer to minds thirsting for the ideal this nectar extended from barley-
water, to take precautions against too much success, to furnish the revolution with a skylight.

The year 1830 carried out this theory, already applied to England by 1688.

The year 1830 is a revolution arrested in mid career. Half progress, quasi right. Now logic ig-
nores the Almost, just as the sun ignores the candle.

Who stops revolutions half-way? The bourgeoisie.

Why?

Because the bourgeoisie is the interest which has attainnd to Satisfaction. Yesterday it was
appetite. today it is fulness, tomorrow it will be satiety.

The phenomenon of 1814 alter Napoleon, was reproduced in 1830 after Charles X.

There has been an attempt, an erroneous one, to make a sprvisl class of the bourgeoisie. The bou-
rgeoisie is simply the contented portion of the people. The bourgeois is the man who has now time
to sit down. A chair is not a caste.

But, by wishing to sit down, we may stop the progress even of the human race. That has often been
the fault of the Intim:reds.

The commission of a fault does not constitute a class. Egotism is not one of the divisions of the so-
cial order.

Moreover, we must be just even towards egotism. The state to which, after the shock of 1830, that
part of the nation which is called bourgeoisie aspired, was not inertia, which is a complication of
indifference and idleness, and which contains something of shame; it was not slumber, which sup-
poses a momentary forgetfulness accessible to dreams: it was a halt.

Halt is a word formed with a singular and almost contradictory double meaning:a troop on the march,
that is to say, movement: stopping. that is in say, repose.

Halt is the regaining of strength, it is armed and watchful repose; it is the ancomplished fact which
plants sentinels and keeps itself upon its guard. Halt supposes battle yesterday and battle tomorrow.

This is the interval between 1830 and 1848.

What we here call battle may also be called progress.

The bourgeoisie, then. as well a the statesman, felt the need of a man who would. express this word:
Halt! An Although Because. A composite individuality, signifying revolution and signifying stability:
in other words, assuring the present through the evident compatibility of the past with the future.

This man was found at hand. His name me. Louis Phillipe d'Orleans.

The 221 made Louis Phillipe king. Lafayette undertook the coronation. He called it the best of the
republics. The Hotel du Ville of Paris replaced the Cathedral of Rheims.

This substitution of a demithrone for the complete throne was "the work of 1830."

When the able had finished their work the immense viciousnessof their solution became apparent. All
this was done without reference to absolute right. The absolute right cried "I protest!" then, a fear-
ful thing, it went back into the obscurity.

III. LOUIS PHILIPPE

Revolutions have a terrible arm and a fortunate hand; they strike hard and choose well. Even when in-
complete, even degenerate and abused, and reduced to the condition of revolution junior, like the Rev-
olution of 1830, they almost always retain enough of the light of providence to prevent a fatal fall.
Their eclipse is never an abdication.

Still, let us not boast too loudly; revolutions, even, are deceived, and disclose grave mistakes.

Let us return to 1830. The year 1830 was fortunate in its deviation. In the establishment which called
itself order after the Ravin-Lion was cut short, the king was better than the royalty. Louis Philippe
was a rare man.

Son of a father to whom history will certainly allow attenuating circumstances, but as worthy of es-
teem as that father had been worthy of blame; having all private virtues and many public virtues;
careful of his health, his fortune, his person, his business, knowing the value of a minute, though
not always the value of a year; sober. serene, peaceful, patient; good man and good prime: sleeping
with his wife and having lackeys in his palace whose business it was to exhibit the conjugal bed to
the bourgeois, an ostentation of domestic regularity which had its use after the former illegitimate
displays of the elder branch; knowing all the languages of Europe, and, what is rarer, all the languages
of all interests, and speaking them; admirable representative of "the middle class," but surpassing it,
and in every way greater than it; having the excellent sense, even while appreciating the blood from
which he sprang, to estimate himself above all at his own intrinsic worth, and, about the question
of his race even, very particular, declaring himself Orleans and not Bourbon; really first Prince of
the Blood, while he had only been Most Serene Highness, but a frank bourgeois. the day he was Ma-
jesty; diffuse in public, concise in private; a declared, but not proven miser; in reality one of those
economical persons who are prodigal, in matters of fancy or their duty; well read, but not very appre-
ciative of letters; a gentleman, but not chivalrous; simple, calm, and strong; worshipped by his fam-
ily and by his house; a seductive talker, an undeceived statesman. interiorly cold, ruled by the pre-
sent interest, governing always by the nearest convenience, incapable of malice or of gratitude, piti-
lessly wearing out superiorities upon mediocraties, able in opposing through parliamentary majorities
those mysterious unanimities which mutter almost inaudibly beneath thrones; expansive, sometimes
imprudent in his expansion. but with marvellous address in that imprudence; fertile in expedients,
in faces, in masks; making France afraid of Europe and Europe of prance; loving his country incon-
testably, but preferring his family; prizing domination more than authority, and authority more than
dignity; a disposition which is to this extent fatal, that, turning everything towards success, it
admits of ruse, and does not absolutely repudiate baseness; but which is profitable to this extent,
that it preserves politics from violent shocks, the state from fractures, and society from catastrophes;
minute, correct, vigilant, attentive, sagacious. indefatigable; contradicting himself sometimes, and
giving himself the lie: bold against Austria at Ancona, obstinate against England in Spain, bombar-
ding Antwerp and paving Pritchard; singing the Marseillaise with conviction: inaccessible to de-
pression. to weariness, to taste for the beautiful and the ideal, to foolhardy generosity, to Utopia,
to chimeras, to anger, to vanity, to fear; having every form of personal bravery; general at Valmy,
soldier at Jemappes. his life attempted eight times by regicides, yet always smiting; brave as a
grenadier, courageous as a thinker; anxious merley before the chances of a European disturbance,
and unfit for great political adventures; always ready to risk his life, never his work; dis-
guising his pleasure in the form of influence that he might be obeyed rather as an intelligence
than as a king; endowed with observation and not with divination, paying little attention to minds.
but able to read the character of men, that is to say, needing to see in order to judge; prompt
and penetrating good sense, practical wisdom, ready speech, prodigious memory; digging incessantly
into that memory, his only point of resemblance with Caesar, Alexander and Napoleon; knowing
facts details, dates, proper names, ignorant of tendencies, passions, the diverse genii of the mul-
titude, interior aspirations, the hidden and obscure uprisings of souls, in one word, all that might
be called the invisible currents of conscience: accepted by the surface, but little in accord with
the under-France; making his way by craft; governing too much and not reigning enough: his own
prime minister: excelling in making of the pettiness of realities an obstacles to the immensity of
ideas; adding to a true creative faculty for civilisation, order, and organisation, an indescribable
spirit of routine and chicanery, founder and attorney of a dynasty; possessing something of Charle-
magne and something of a lawyer; to sum up, a lofty and original figure, a prince who knew how to
gain powers in spite of the recklessness of France, and power in spite of the jealously of Europe.
Louis Philippe will be classed among the eminent men of his century. and would be ranked among the
illustrious rulers of history if he had had a little love of glory, and had appreciated what is great
to the same extent that he appreciated what is useful.

Louis Philippe had been handsome, and, when old, was still fine looking; not always agreeable to
the nation, he always was to the multitude; befleased. He had this gif tea charm. Majesty he lacked;
he neither wore the crown, though king, nor white hair, though an old man. His manners were of the
old regime, and his habits of the new, a mixture of the noble and the bourgeois which was befitting
to 1830; Louis Philippe was regnant transition:le had preserved the ancient pronunciation and the
ancient orthography which he put into the service of modern opinions; he loved Poland and Hungary,
but he wrote les polonois, and pronounced les hongrais. ife wore the dress of the National Guard like
Charles X. and the cordon of the Legion of Honour like Napoleon.

He went rarely to chapel, not at all to the chase, never to the opera. Incorruptible by priests,
dog-keepers, and danscuses; this entered into his popularity with the bourgeoisie. He had no court.
He went out with Ins umbrella under his arm, and this umbrella for a long time was a portion of his
glory. He was something of a mason, something of a gardener, and something of a doctor; he bled a
postillion who fell from his horse; Louis Philippe no more went without his Lancet than Henry III.
without his poniard. The royalists laughed at this ridiculous king, the first who had spilled blood
to save.

In the complaints of history against Louis Philippe, there is deduction to be made, there is what is
to be charged to the royalty, what is to be charged to the reign, and what is to be charged to the
king; three columns, each of which gives a different total. The right of democracy confiscated, pro-
gress made the second interest, the protests of the street violently repressed, the military execu-
tion of insurrections, emeutes passed over by arms, the Rue Transnonain, the councils of war, the
absorption of the real country. by the Icedcountry, country, the theory of the government but half
carried out, with three hundred thousand privileged persons, are the acts of the royalty; Belgium
refused, Algeria too harshly conquered, and, like India by the English, with more of barbarism than
civilisation, the breach of faith with Abd-el-Kader, Blaye, Deutz purchased, Pritchard paid, are the
acts of the reign: the policy, which looked rather to the family than to the nation, is the act of
the king.

As we see, when the deduction is made, the charge against the king is diminished.

His great fault was this: He was modest in the name of France

Whence comes this fault?

We must tell.

Louis Philippe was a too fatherly king; this incubation of a family which is to be hatched into a
dynasty is afraid of everything, and cannot bear disturbance; hence excessive timidity, annoying to
a people who have the 14th of July in their civil traditions, an Austerlitz in their military tradi-
tions.

Moreover, if we throw aside public duties, which first demand to he fulfilled, this deep tenderness
of Louis Philippe for his family the family deserved. This domestic group was wanderful. Their virtues
emulated their talents. One of Louis Philippe's daghters, Maria d'Orleans, put the name of her race
among artists as Charles d'Orleans had put it among poets. Out of her soul she made a statue which
she called Jeanne d'Arc. Two of Louis Philippe's sons drew from Metternich this eulogy of a demagogue:
They are young men such as we rarely see, and princes such as we never see.

This is, without keeping anything back, but also without aggravating anything, the truth about Louis
Philippe.

To be Prince Equality, to hear within himself the contradiction of the Restoration and the Revolution,
to have this threatening aspect of the revolutionist which becomes reassuring in the ruler, such was the
fortune of Louis Philippe in 1830; never was there a more complete adaptation of a man to an event; the
one entered into the other, and there was an incarnation. Louis Philippe is 1830 made man. Moreover,
he had in his favour that grand designation for the throne, exile. He had been proscribed, a wanderer,
poor. He had lived by his labour. In Switzerland. this heir to the richest princely domains in France
had sold an old horse, to procure food. At Reichenau he had given lessons in mathematics. while his
sister Adelaide did sewing and embroidery. These memories associated with a king, rendered the bour-
geoisie enthusiastic. He had with his own hands demolished the last iron cage of Mont Saint Michel,
built by Louis XI. and used by Louis XV. He was the companion of Dumouriez, he was the friend of Laf-
ayette: he had belonged to the Jacobin Club: Mirabeau had slapped him on the shoulder: Danton had
said to him, "Young man!" At twenty-four years of age, in '03, being M. de Chartres, from the back of
an obscure bench in the convention, he had been present at the trial of Link XVI., so well named that
poor tyrant. The blind clairvoyance of the Revolution, crushing royalty in the king, and the king
with the royalty, almost without noticing the man in the savage overthrow of the idea, the vast storm
of the tribunal-assembly, the public wrath questioning, Capet not knowing what to answer, the fearful
stupefied vacillation of this royal head under that terrible blow, the relative innocence of all in that
catastrophe, of those who condemned as well as of him who was condemned; he had seen these
things, he had looked upon this mad whirl; he had seen the centuries appear at the bar of the Con-
vention; he had seen behind Louis XVI., that hapless, responsible by-passer, rising up in the
darkness, the fear-inspiring criminal, the monarchy; and there was still in his soul a respectful
fear before this limitless justice of the people, almost as impersonal as the justice of God.

The effect which the Revolution produced upon him was tremendous. His memory was like a living
impression of those grand years, minute by minute. One day, before a witness whom it is impossible
for us to doubt, he corrected from memory the whole letter A of the alphabetic list of the const-
ituent assembly.

Louis Philippe was a king in broad day. While he reigned the press was free, the tribune was free,
conscience and speech were free! The laws of September are clear and open. Knowing well the
corroding power of light on privileges, he left his throne exposed to the light. History will acknow-
ledge this loyalty.

Louis Philippe, like all historic men who have left the scene, is now to be put upon his trial by the
human conscience. He is as yet only before the grand jury.

The hour in which history speaks with its free and venerable accent, has not yet struck for him;
the time has not come to pronounce final judgment upon this king; that austere and illustrious
historian Louis Blanc, has himself recently modified his first verdict: Louis Philippe was the
elect of those two almosts which are called the 221 and 1830, that is to say, of a demi-parliament
and a demi-revolution; and at all events, from the superior point of view in which philosophy
ought to place herself, we could judge him here, as we have before intimated, only under certain
reservations in the name of the absolute democratic principle; in the eyes of the absolute, bey-
ond these rights: the rights of man first, the rights of the people afterwards, all is usurpation;
but we can say at present, having made these reservations, that to sum up, and in whatever way
he is considered, Louis Philippe, taken by himself, and from the point of view of human goodness,
will remain, to use the old language of ancient history, one of the best princes that ever sat
upon a throne.

What is there against him? That throne. Take from Louis Philippe the king, there remains the man.
And the man is good. He is sometimes so good as to be admirable. Often, in the midst of the grav-
est cares, after a day of struggle against the whole diplomacy of the continent, he retired at
evening into his apartment, and there, exhausted with fatigue, bowed down with sleep, what did
he do? He took a bundle of documents, and passed the night in reviewing a criminal prosecution,
feeling that it was something to make head against Europe, but that it was a much grander thing
still to save a man from the executioner. He was obstinate against his keeper of the seals; he
disputed inch by inch the ground of the guillotine with the attorney-generals, those babblers of
the law, as he called them. Sometimes the heaped-up documents covered his table; he examined
them all; it was anguish to him to give up those wretched condemned heads. One day he said to the
same witness whom we have just now referred to: Last night I saved seven. During the early years
of his reign, the death penalty was abolished and the re-erected scaffold was a severe blow to the
king. La Greve having disappeared with the elder branch a bourgeois Greve was instituted under
the name of Barriere Saint Jacques; "practical men" felt the need of a quasi-legitimate guill-
otine; and this was one of the victories of Casimir Perier, who represented the more conservative
portions of the bourgeoisie, over Louis Philippe, who represented its more liberal portions.
Louis Philippe annotated Beccaria with his own hand. After the Fieschi machine, he exclaimed:
What a pity that I was not wounded! I could have pardoned him. At another time, alluding to the
resistance of his ministers, he wrote concerning a political convict, who is one of the noblest
figures of our times: His pardon is granted, it only remains for me to obtain it. Louis Philippe
was as gentle as Louis IX., and as good as Henry IV.

Now, to us, in history where goodness is the pearl of great price, he who has been good stands
almost above him who has been great.

Louis Philippe having been estimated with severity by some, harshly, perhaps, by others, it is
very natural that a man, now himself a phantom, who knew this man should come forward to testify
for him before history; this testimony, whatever it may be, is evidently and above all disinter-
ested; an epitaph written by a dead man is sincere; one shade may console another shade; the
sharing of the same darkness gives the right to praise; and there is little fear that it will
ever be said of two tombs in exile: This one flattered the other.

IV. CREVICES UNDER THE FOUNDATION

AT THE MOMENT the drama which we are relating is about to penetrate into the depths of one of the
tragic clouds which cover the first years of the reign of Louis Philippe, we could not be ambiguous,
and it was necessary that this book should be explicit in regard to this king.

Louis Philippe entered into the royal authority without violence, without direct action on his part,
by the action of a revolutionary transfer, evidently very distinct from the real aim of the revolution,
but in which he, the Duke d'Orleans, had no personal initiative. He was a born prince, and believed
himself elected king. He had not given himself this command; he had not taken it; it had been offered
to him and he had accepted it; convinced, wrongly in our opinion, but convinced, that the offer was
consistent with right, and that the acceptance was consistent with duty. Hence a possession in good
faith. Now, we say it in all conscience, Louis Philippe being in good faith in his possession, and
the democracy being in good faith in their attack, the terror which arises from social struggles is
chargeable neither to the king nor to the democracy. A shock of principles resembles a shock of the
elements. The ocean defends the water, the hurricane defends the air; the king defends royalty, the
democracy defends the people; the relative, which is the monarchy, resists the absolute, which is
the republic; society bleeds under this struggle, but what is its suffering today will be its safe-
ty hereafter; and, at all events, there is no censure due to those who struggle; one of the two par-
ties is evidently mistaken; right is not like the colossus of Rhodes, upon two shores at once, one
foot in the republic, one foot in royalty; it is indivisible, and all on one side; but those who are mis-
taken are sincerely mistaken; a blind man is no more a criminal than a Vendeen is a brigand. Let us,
then, impute these terrible collisions only to the fatality of things. Whatever these tempests may be,
human responsibility is not mingled with them.

Let us complete this exposition.

The government of 1830 had from the first a hard life. Born yesterday, it was obliged to fight today.

It was hardly installed when it began to feel on all sides vague rn0ve menu directed against the mach-
inery of July, still so newly set up, and s far from secure.

Resistance was born on the morrow, perhaps even it was born on the eve.

From month to month the hostility increased, and from dumb became outspoken.

The Revolution of July, tardily accepted, as we have said, outside of France by the kings, had been
diversely interpreted in France.

God makes visible to men his will in events, an obscure text written in a mysterious language. Men make
their translations of it forthwith; hasty translations, incorrect, full of faults, omissions, and misread-
ings. Very few minds comprehend the divine tongue. The most sagacious, the most calm, the most pro-
found, decipher slowly, and when they arrive with their text, the need has long gone by; there are al-
ready twenty translations in the public square. From each translation a party is born, and from each
misreading a faction; and each party believes it has the only true text, and each faction believes that
it possesses the light.

Often the government itself is a faction.

There are in revolutions some swimmers against the stream, these are the old parties.

To the old parties, who are attached to hereditary right by the grace of God, revolutions having arisen
from the right of revolt, there is a right of revolt against them. An error. For in revolutions the re-
volted party is not the people, it is the king. Revolution is precisely the opposite of revolt. Every
revolution, being a normal accomplishment, contains in itself its own legitimacy, which false revolu-
tionists sometimes dishonour, but which persists, even when sullied, which survives, even when stained
with blood. Revolutions spring, not from an accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from
the factitious to the real. It is, because it must be.

The old legitimist parties none the less assailed the Revolution of 1830 with all the violence which
springs from false reasoning. Errors are excellent projectiles. They struck it skilfully just where
it was vulnerable, at the defect in its cuirass, its want of logic; they attacked this revolution in
its royalty. They cried to it: Revolution, why this king? Factions are blind men who aim straight.

This cry was uttered also by the republicans. But, coming from them, this cry was logical. What was
blindness with the legitimists was clear-sightedness with the democrats. The year 1830 had become bank-
rupt with the people. The democracy indignantly reproached it with its failure.

Between the attack of the past and the attack of the future, the establishment of July was struggling.
It represented the moment, in conflict on the one hand with the monarchical centuries, on the other hand
with the eternal right.

Moreover, externally, being no longer the revolution, and becoming the the monarchy, 1830 was obliged
to keep step with Europe. To preserve peace, an increase of complication. A harmony required in the wrong
way is often more onerous than a war. From this sullen conflict, always muzzled but always muttering,
is born armed peace, that ruinous expedient of civilisation suspected by herself. The royalty of July
reared, in spite of the lash, in the harness of the European cabinets. Metternich would have been glad
to put it in kicking-straps. Pushed upon in France by progress, it pushed upon the monarchies in Europe,
those tardigrades. Towed, it towed.

Meanwhile, within the country, pauperism, proletariat, wages, education, punishment, prostitution the
lot of woman, riches, misery, production, consumption, distribution, exchange, money, credit, rights of
capital, rights of labour, all these questions multiplied over society; a terrible steep.

Outside of the political parties properly speaking, another movement manifested itself. To the democra-
tic fermentation, the philosophic fermentation responded. The elite felt disturbed as well as the mult-
itude; otherwise, but as much.

Thinkers were meditating, while the soil, that is to say, the people, traversed by the revolutionary
currents, trembled beneath them with mysterious epileptic shocks. These thinkers, some isolated, others
gathered into families and almost into communion, were turning over social questions, peacefully, but
profoundly; impassible miners, who were quietly pushing their galleries into the depths of a volcano,
scarcely disturbed by the sullen commotions and the half-seen glow of lava.

This tranquillity was not the least beautiful spectacle of that agitated period.

These men left to political parties the question of rights, they busied themselves with the question of
happiness.

The well-being of man was what they wished to extract from society.

They raised the material questions, questions of agriculture, of industry, of commerce, almost to the
dignity of a religion. In civilisation such as it is constituted to small extent by God, to great by man,
interests are combined, aggregated, and amalgamated in such a manner as to form actual hard rock, ac-
cording to a dynamic law patiently studied by the economists, those geologists of politics.

These men who grouped themselves under different appellations but who may all be designated by the
generic title of socialists, endeavoured to pierce this rock and to make the living waters of human feli-
city gush forth from it.

From the question of the scaffold to the question of war, their labours embraced everything. To the
rights of man, proclaimed by the French Revolution, they added the rights of woman and the rights of
childhood.

No one will be astonished that for various reasons, we do not here treat fundamentally, from the the-
oretic point of view, the questions raised by socialism. We limit ourselves to indicating them.

All the problems which the socialists propounded, aside from the cosmogonic visions, dreams, and mystici
cism, may be reduced to two principal problems.

First problem:

To produce wealth.

Second problem:

To distribute it.

The first problem contains the question of labour.

The second contains the question of wages.

In the first problem the question is of the employment of force. In the second of the distribution of
enjoyment.

From the good employment of force results public power.

From the good distribution of enjoyment results individual happiness.

By good distribution, we must understand not equal distribution, but equitable distribution. The highest
equality is equity.

From these two things combined, public power without, individual happiness within, results social pros-
perity.

Social prosperity means, man happy, the citizen free, the nation great.

England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth wonderfully; she distributes it badly.
This solution, which is complete only on one side, leads her inevitably to these two extremes: monstrous
opulence, monstrous misery. All the enjoyment to a few, all the privation to the rest, that is to say,
to the people; privilege, exception, monopoly, feudality, springing from labour itself; a false and dan-
gerous situation which founds public power upon private misery, which plants the grandeur of the state
in the suffering of the individual. A grandeur ill constituted, in which all the material elements are
combined, and into which no moral element enters.

Communism and agarian law think they have solved the second problem. They are mistaken. Their distri-
bution kills production. Equal partition abolishes emulation. And consequently labour. It is a distribution
made by the butcher, who kills what he divides. It is therefore impossible to stop at these professed so-
lutions. To kill wealth is not to distribute it.

The two problems must be solved together to be well solved. The two solutions must be combined and
form but one.

Solve the first only of the two problems, you will be Venice, you will be England. You will have like
Venice an artificial power, or like England a material power; you will be the evil rich man, you will
perish by violence, as Venice died, or by bankruptcy, as England will fall, and the world will let you
die and fall, because the world lets everything fall and die, which is nothing but selfishness, every-
thing which does not represent a virtue or an idea for the human race.

It is of course understood that by these words, Venice, England, we designate not the people, but
the social constructions; the oligarchies superimposed upon the nations, and not the nations them-
selves. The nations always have our respect and our sympathy. Venice, the people, will will fall,
but England, the nation, is be reborn; England, the aristocracy, immortal. This said, we proceed.

Solve the two problems, encourage the rich, and protect the poor, suppress misery, put an end to
the unjust speculation upon the weak by the strong, put a bridle upon the iniquitous jealousy of him
who is on the road, against him who has reached his end, adjust mathematically and fraternally wages
to labour, join gratuitous and obligatory instruction to the growth of childhood, and make science
the basis of manhood, develop the intelligence while you occupy the arm, be at once a powerful peo-
ple and a family of happy men, democratise property, not by abolishing it, but by universalising it,
in such a way that every citizen without exception may be a proprietor, an easier thing than it is
believed to be; in two words, learn to produce wealth and learn to distribute it, and you shall
have material grandeur and moral grandeur combined; and you shall be worthy to call yourselves
France.

This, above and beyond a few sects which ran wild, is what socialism said; that is what it sought to
realise; this is what it outlined in men's minds.

Admirable efforts! sacred attempts!

These doctrines, these theories, these resistances, the unforeseen necessity for the statesman to
consult with the philosopher, confused evidences half seen, a new politics to create, accordant with
the old world, and yet not too discordant with the ideal of the revolution; a state of affairs in
which Lafayette must be used to oppose Polignac, the intuition of progress transparent in the emeute,
the chambers, and the street, competitions to balance about him, his faith in the revolution, perhaps
some uncertain eventual resignation arising from the vague acceptance of a definitive superior right,
his desire to remain in his race, his family pride, his sincere respect for the people, his own hon-
esty, pre-occupied Louis Philippe almost painfully, and at moments, strong and as courageous as he
was, overwhelmed him under the difficulties of being king.

He felt beneath his feet a terrible disaggregation which was not, however, a crumbling into dust--
France being more France than ever.

Dark drifts covered the horizon. A strange shadow approaching nearer and nearer, was spreading little
by little over men, over things, over ideas; shadow which came from indignations and from systems.
All that had been hurriedly stifled was stirring and fermenting. Sometimes the conscience of the hon-
est man caught its breath, there was so much confusion in that air in which sophists were mingled
with truths. Minds trembled in the social anxiety like leaves at the approach of the storm. The elec-
tric tension was so great that at certain moments any chance-corner, though unknown, flashed out.
Then the twilight obscurity fell again. At intervals, deep and sullen mutterings enabled men to
judge the amount of lightning in the cloud.

Twenty months had hardly rolled away since the revolution or July, the year 1832 had opened with
an imminent and menacing aspect. The distress of the people; labourers without bread; the last
Prince de Conde lost in the darkness Brussels driving away the Nassaus, as Paris had driven away
the Bourbons; Belgium offering herself to a French prince, and given to an English prince; the
Russian hatred of Nicholas; in our rear two demons of the south, Ferdinand in Spain, Miguel in
Portugal; the earth quaking in help; Metternich extending his hand over Bologna; France bluntly
opposing Austria at Ancona; in the north a mysterious ill-omened sound of a hammer nailing Poland
again into its coffin; throughout Europe angry looks keeping watch over France; England a suspi-
cious ally, ready to push over whoever might bend, and to throw herself upon whoever might fall;
the peerage sheltering itself behind Beccaria, to refuse four heads to the law; the fleur-de-lys
erased from the king's carriage; the cross torn down from Notre Dame; Lafayette in decay; Laffitte
ruined; Benjamin Constant dead in poverty; Casimir Perier dead from loss of power; the political
disease and the social disease breaking out in the two capitals of the realm, one the city of
thought, the other the city of labour; at Paris civil war, at Lyons servile war; in the two cit-
ies the same furnace glare; the flush of the crater on the forehead of the people; the South fan-
atical, the West disturbed; the Duchess of Berry in La Vendee; plots, conspiracies, uprisings,
the cholera, added to the dismal tumult of ideas, the dismal uproar of events.

V. FACTS FROM WHICH HISTORY SPRINGS, AND WHICH HISTORY IGNORES

TOWARD THE END OF APRIL everything was worse. The fermentation became a boiling. Since 1830 there
had been here and there some little partial emeutes, quickly repressed, but again breaking out, signs of a
vast underlying conflagration. Something terrible was brooding. Glimpses were caught of the lineaments,
still indistinct and scarcely visible, of a possible revoluion. France looked to Paris; Paris looked
to the Faubourg Saint Antoine.

The Faubourg Saint Antoine sullenly warmed up, was beginning to boil.

The wine-shops of the Rue de Charonne, although the junction of the two epithets seems singular, ap-
plied to wine-shops, were serious and stormy.

In them the simple existence of the government was brought in question. The men there publicly dis-
cussed whether it were the thing to fight or to remain quiet. There were back shops where all oath
was administered to working-men, that they would be in the streets at the first cry of alarm, and
"that they would fight without counting the number of the enemy." The engagement once taken, a man
seated in a corner of the wine-shop "made a sonorous voice," and said: "You understand it! you have
sworn it!" Sometimes they went upstairs into a closed room, and there scenes occurred which were
almost masonic. Oaths were administered to the initiated to render service to them as they would to
their own fathers. That was the formula.

In the lower rooms they read "subversive" pamphlets. They pelted the government, says a secret re-
port of the times.

Such words as these were heard.--"I don't know the names of the chiefs. As for us, we shall only
know the day two hours beforehand." A working-man said: "There are three hundred of us, let us put
in ten sous each, that will make a hundred and fifty francs to manufacture powder and ball." An-
other said: "I don't ask six months, I don't ask two. In less than a fortnight we shall meet the
government face to face. With twenty-five thousand men we can make a stand." Mother said: "I don't
go to bed, because I am making cartridges all night." From time to time, men "like bourgeois, and
in fine coats" came, "causing embarrassment," and having the air "of command," gave a grip of the
hand to the most important, and went away. They never stayed more than ten minutes. Significant
words were exchanged in a low voice: "The plot is ripe, the thing is complete." "This was buzzed
by all who were there," to borrow the very expression of one of the participants. The exaltation
was such that one day, in a public wine-shop, a working-man exclaimed: We have no arms! One of his
comrades answered: The soldiers have! thus parodying, without suspecting it, Bonaparte's proclama-
tion to the army of Italy. "When they have anything more secret," adds a report, "they do not com-
municate it in those places." One can hardly comprehend what they could conceal after saying what
they did.

The meetings were sometimes periodical. At some there were never more than eight or ten, and always
the same persons. In others, anybody who chose entered, and the room was so full that they were
forced to stand. Some were there from enthusiasm and passion; others because it was on their way
to their work. As in the time of the revolution, there were in these wine-shops some female patri-
ots, who embraced the new-comers.

Other expressive facts came to light.

A man entered a shop, drank, and went out, saying: "Wine-merchant, what is due, the revolution will
pay."

At a wine-shop opposite the Rue de Charonne revolutionary officers were elected. The ballots were ga-
thered in caps.

Some working-men met at a fencing-master's, who gave lessons in the Rue de Cotte. There was a trophy
of arms there, formed of wooden swords canes, clubs, and foils. One day they took the buttons off the
foils. A working-man said: "We are twenty-five; but they don't count on me, because they look upon me
as a machine." This machine was afterwards Quenisset.

All the little things which were premeditated, gradually acquired some strange notoriety. A woman
sweeping her door-step said to another woman: For a long time they have been hard at work making
cartridges. Proclamations were read in the open street, addressed to the National Guards of the De-
partments. One of these proclamations was signed: Burtot, wine-merchant.

One day at a liquor-dealer's door in the Lenoir market, a man with a heavy beard and an Italian ac-
cent mounted on a block and read aloud a sin-gular writing which seemed to emanate from a secret
power. Groups formed about him and applauded. The passages which stirred the crowd most were caught
and noted down. ". . . Our doctrines are trammelled, our proclamations are torn down, our posters
are watched and thrown into prison .. ." ". . . The recent fall in cottons has converted many mod
erates ... "The future of the peoples is being worked out in our obscure ranks." ". . Behold the
statement of the matter: action or reaction, revolution or counterrevolution. For, in our times,
there is no belief longer in inertia or in immobility. For the people or against the people, that
is the question. There is no other." ". . . The day that we no longer suit you, crush us but until
then help us to go forward." All this in broad day.

Other acts, bolder still, were suspected by the people on account of their very boldness. On the
4th of April, 1832, a passer-by mounted the block at the corner of the Rue Sainte Marguerite,
and cried: I am a Babouvist! But under Babeuf the people scented Gisquet.

Among other things, this man said:

"Down with property! The opposition of the left are cowards and traitours. When then they want to
be right, they preach revolution. They are democrats that they may not be beaten, and royalists
that they may not fight. The republicans are feathered beasts. Distrust the republicans, citizen
labourers."

"Silenece, citizen spy!" cried a working-man.

This put an end to the discourse.

Mysterious incidents occurred.

At nightfall, a working-man met "a well-dressed man" near the canal, who said to him: "Where are
you going, citizen?" "Monsieur," said the working-man, "I have not the honour of knowing you."
"I know you very well." And the man added: "Don't be afraid. I am the officer of the Committee.
They are suspicious that you are not very sure. You know that if you reveal anything, we have
an eye upon you." Then he gave the working-man a grip of the hand and went away, saying: "We
shall meet again soon."

The police, on the scout, overheard, not merely in the wine-shops, but in the street, singular
dialogues: "Get yourself admitted very quick," said a weaver to a cabinet-maker.

"Why?"

"There is going to be some shooting."

Two passers in rags exchanged these remarkable phrases, big with apparent Jacquerie.

"Who governs us?"

"Monsieur Philippe."

"No, it's the bourgeoisie."

You would be mistaken if you supposed that we used the word Jacquerie in bad part. The Jacques
were the poor.

Another time, two men were heard passing by, one of whom said to the other: "We have a good
plan of attack."

Of a private conversation between four men crouching in a ditch at the fork of the road by the
Barriere du Trone, there was caught only this:

"All that is possible will be done that he may promenade in Paris no more."

Who was he? Threatening obscurity.

"The principal chiefs," as they said in the Faubourg, kept out of sight. They were believed to
meet to concert together, in a wine-shop near Point Saint Eustache. One named Aug--, chief of
the Tailors' Benevolent Society, Rue Mondetour, was thought to act as principal intermediary
between the chiefs and the Faubourg Saint Antoine. Nevertheless, there was always much obscur-
ity about that chiefs, and no actual fact could weaken the singular boldness of the response
afterwards made by a prisoner before the Court of Peers.

"Who was your chief?"

"I knew none, and I recognised none."

Still it was hardly more than words, transparent, but vague; sometimes rumours in the air,
they-says, hearsay. Other indication were discovered.

A carpenter, engaged on the Rue de Reuilly in nailing the boards of a fence about a lot on
which a house was building, found in the lot a fragment of a torn letter, on which the follow-
ing lines were still legible.

The Committee must take measures to prevent recruiting in the sections for the different soc-
ieties..."

And in a postscript:

"We have learned that there are muskets at No. 5 (Ms) Rue du Faubourg Poissoniere, to the
number of five or six thousand, at an armmwer's in that court. The section has no arms."

What excited the carpenter and made him show the thing to his neighbours was that a few
steps further on he picked up another paper also tons, lint still more significant, the
form ofwhich we reproduce on account of the historic interest of these strange documents:

[graphic]

Those who were at the time in the secret of this discovery not know till afterwards the mean-
ing of these four capitals; quinterions, centerions, decurions, scouts, and the sense of those
letters: u og a fe which was a date, and which meant this 15th April, 1832. Under each capital
were inscribed names followed by very characteristic indications. Thus: Q. Baunerel. 8 muskets.
83 cartridges. Sure man. C. Boubiere. 1 pistol. 40 cartridges. D. Roller. 1 foil. 1 pistol. 1
pound of powder. S. Teissier. 1 sabre. 1 cartridge-box. Exact. Terreur. 8 muskets. Brave, etc.

Finally this carpenter found, in the same inclosure also, a third paper on which was written
in pencil, but very legibly, this enigmatic list:

Unity. Blanchard: dry-tree. 6.
Barra. Soize. Salle au Comte
Kosciusko. Aubry the butcher?
J.J.R.
Caius Gracchus.
Right of revision. Dufond. Four.
Fall of the Girondins. Derbac. isfaubuee.
Washington. PiMon. 1 pint. 86 cart.
Marseillaise.
Sover. of the people. Michel. Quincampoix. Sabre.
Roche.
Marceau. Plato. Dry-tree.
Warsaw. Tilly, crier of Le Populaire.

The honest bourgeois who finally came into possession of this list knew its signification. It ap-
peared that this list gave the complete nomenclature of the sections of the Fourth Arrondissement
of the Society of the Rights of Man, with the names and residences of the chiefs of sections. At
this day, when all these fads then unknown are matter of history only, they can be published. It
should be added that the foundation of the society of the Rights of Man seems to have been post-
erior to the time when this paper was found. Perhaps it was merely a draft.

Meanwhile, after rumours and speeches, after written indications, material facts began to
leak out.

In the Rue Popincourt, at an old curiosity shop, there were seized in a bureau drawer seven sheets
of grey paper all evenly folded in quarto; these sheets inclosed twenty-six squares of the same
grey paper folded in the form of cartridges, and a card upon which was written:

Saltpetre, 12ounces.
Sulphur; 2ounces.
Charcoal, 2 ounces and a half.
Water, 2 ounces.

The official report of the seizure stated that the drawer exhaled strong odour of powder.

A mason going home, after his day's work, forgot a little package n a bench near the Bridge of Aus-
terlitz. This package was carried to the guard-house. It was opened and disclosed two printed diais,
signed frifioniptc, isong entitled: Working-men, associate, na if tin box full of cartridges.

A working-man, drinking with a comrade, made him put his hand on him to see how warm he was;
the other felt a pistol under his vest.

In a ditch on the boulevard, between Pere Lachaise and the Barriere du Trone, at the most solitary
spot, some children, playing. discovered under a heap of chips and rubbish a bag which contained a
bullet-mould, a wooden mandrel for making cartridges, a wooden mortar in which there were some grains
of hunting powder, and a little melting pot the interior of which showed unmistakable traces of melted
lead.

Some policemen, penetrating suddenly at five o'clock in the mom ing into the house of a Man, named
Pardon, who was afterwards sectionary of the section of the Barricade Merry, and was killed in the
insurrection of April 1834, found him standing not far from his bed, with cartridges in his hands,
which he was in the act of making.

About the hour when working-men rest, two men were seen to meet between the Barriere Picpus and the
Barriere Charenton in a little cross alley between two walls near a wine-dealer's who had a card-table
before his door. One took a pistol from under his blouse and handed it to the other. At the moment of
handing it to him he perceived that the perspiration from his breast had communicated some moisture to
the powder. Heprimed the pistol, and added some powder to that which was already in the pan. Then the
two well went away.

A man named Gallais, afterwards killed in the Rue Beauboom in the affair of April, boasted that be
had seven hundred cartridges and twenty-four gun-flints at home.

The government received word one day that arms had just been distributed in the Faubourg and two
hundred thousand cartridges. The week afterwards thirty thousand cartridges were distributed. A
remarkable thing, the police could not seize one. An intercepted letter contained: "The day is
not distant when in four hours by the clock, eighty thousand patriots will be under arms."

All this fermentation was public, we might almost say Mitt The imminent insurrection gathered its
Storm calmly in the loFe of the government. No singularity was wanting in this crisis. 41 subter-
ranean, but already perceptible. Bourgeois talked quietly with working-men about the preparations.
They would say: affor,,? the entente coming on?" in the same tone in which they walla nac` said:
"How is your wife?”

A furniture dealer, Rue Moreau, asked: "Well, when do you attack?"

Another shopkeeper said:

"You will attack very soon, I know. A month ago there wee! fifteen thousand of you, now there are
twenty-five thousand of you. - He offered his gun, and a neighbour offered a little pistol which
he wanted to sell for seven francs.

The revolutionary fever, however, was increasing. No point of Paris or of France was exempt from
it. The artery pulsated everywhere. Like those membranes which are born of certain inflamma-tions
and formed in the human body, the network of the secret societies began to spread over the country.
From the association of the Friends of the People, public and secret at the same time, sprang the
society of the Rights of Man, which dated one of its orders of the day thus: Pluviose, year 40
of the Republican Era, which was to survive even the decrees of the Court of Assizes pronounc-
ing its dissolution, and which had no hesitation in giving its sections such significant names as
these:

The Pikes. The Vagrants.
Tocsin. Forward march.
Alarm Gun. Robespierre.
Phrygian Cap. Level.
21s1 January. Ca Ira.
The Beggars

The Society of the Rights of Man produced the Society of Action. These were the more impatient
who left it and ran forward. Other associations sought to recruit from the large mother societies.
The sectionaries com-plained of being pestered by this. Thus arose The Gallic Society and the Or-
ganising Committee of the Municipalities. Thus the associations for the Freedom of the Press,
for Individual Freedom, for the Instruction of the People, against Direct Taxes. 'Then
the society of the Equaling Working-men which divided into three fractions, the Equalitists, the
Communists and the Reformers. Then the Army of the Bastilles, a sort of cohort with a military
organisation, four men commanded by a corporal, ten by a sergeant, twenty by a second lieutenant,
forty by a lieutenant; there were never more than five hundred men who knew each other. A crea-
tion in which precaution was combined with boldness, and which seems marked with the genius of
Venice. The central committee, which was the head, had two arms, the Society of Action and the
Army of the Bastilles. A legitimist association, the Chevaliers of Fidelity, moved among these
republican affiliations. But it was denounced and repudiated.

The Parisian societies ramified into the principal cities. Lyons. Nantes, Lisle, and Afarseilks
had their Society of the Rights of Man, the Carbonari, the Free Men. Aix had a revolutionary
society which was called the Cougourdc. We have already pronounced this word.

At Paris the Faubourg Saint Marceau was hardly less noisy than the Faubourg Saint Antoine, and
the schools not less excited than the Faubourgs. A cafe in the Rue St. Hyacinthe, and the drin-
king and smoking room of the Seven Billiards. Rue des Afatlmrin St. Jacques, served as rallying
pleas for the students. The Society ofthe Friends of the A B C, affiliated with the Mutualists
of Angers and with the Cougourde of Aix, met, as we have seen, at the Cale Husain. These same
young people also gathered; as we have said.' in a restau-rant wine-shop near the Atte Monde-
tour which was called Corinthe. These meetings were secret, others were as public as possible,
and we may judge of their boldness by this fragment of OW M. terrogatory during one of the sub-
sequent trials: "Where was this meeting held?""Rue dela Nix." "In whose house?" "In the street."
"What sections were there?" "But one." "Which one?"."The Men net section." "Who was the chief?"
"I." "You are too young to have formed alone the grave resolution of attacking the government
Whence came your instructions?" "From the central committee."

The army was mined at the same time as the population, as Was proved afterwards by the move
ments of Bisford, Luneville. and Epinal. They counted on the fifty-second regiment, the fifth,
the eighth, the thirty-seventh, and the twentieth light. In Burgundy and in the cities of the
South the tree of Liberty was planted. That is to say, a pole surmounted by a red cep.

Such was the situation.

This situation was, as we said in the beginning, rendered tangible and emphatic by the Faubourg
Saint Antoine more than by any otker portion of the population. There was the stitch in the
side.

This old Faubourg, populous as an ant-hill, industrious, courageous. and choleric as a hive,
was thrilling with the expectation and the desire for a commotion. Everything was in agitation.
and yet labour was not interrupted on that account. Nothing can give an idea of that vivid yet
dark phase of affairs. There are in that Faubourg bitter distresses hidden under garret roofs;
there are there also ardent and rare intelligencies. And it is especially in reference to dis-
tress and intelligence that it is dangerous for extremes meet

The Faubourg Saint Antoine had still other causes of excitement for it felt the rebound of the
commercial crises, of the failures, the strikes, and stoppages, inherent in great political disturb-
ances. In time of revolution misery is at once cause and effect. The blow which it strikes returns
upon itself. This population, full of proud virtue, filled with latent caloric to the highest point,
always ready for an armed contest, prompt to explode, irritated, deep, mined, seemed only
waiting for the fall of a spark. Whenever certain sparks are floating over the horizon driven
by the the wind of events. we cannot but think of the Faubourg Saint Antoine and the terrible
chance which has placed that powder-mill of sufferings and ideas at the gates of Paris.

The wine-shops or the Faubourg Antoine, more than once referred to in the preceding sketch, have
a notoriety which is historic. In times of trouble their words are more intoxicating than their wine.
A sort of prophetic spirit and an odour of the future circulates in them, swelling hearts and en-
larging souls. The wine-shops of the Faubourg Antoine resemble those taverns of Mount Aventine,
over the Sybil's cave, and communicating with the deep and sacred afflatus; taverns whose tables
were almost tripods, and where men drank what Ennius calls the sibylline wine.

The Fauborg Saint Antoine is a reservoir of people. Revolutionary agitation makes fissures in it
through which flows popular sovereignty. This sovereignty may do harm; it makes mistakes like e-
verythmg else; but, even when led astray, it is still grand. We may say of it as of the blind
Cyclops, Ingens.*

In '93, according as the idea which was afloat was good or bad, according as it was the day of
fanaticism or of enthusiasm, there came from the Faubourg Saint Antoine sometimes savage legions,
sometimes heroic bands.

Savage. We must explain this word. What was the aim of those bristling men who in the demiurgic
days of revolutionary chaos, ragged, howling, wild, with tomahawk raised, and pike aloft, rush-
ed ever old overturned Paris? They desired the end of oppressions, the end of tyrannies, the end
of the sword, labour for man, instruction for children, social gentleness for woman, liberty,
equality, fraternity, bread for all, ideas for all. The Edenisation of the world, Progress; and
this holy, good, and gentle thing, progress, pushed to the wall and beside themselves, they de-
manded, terrible, half naked, a club in their grasp, and a roar in their mouth. They were sav-
ages, yes; but the savages of civilisation.

They proclaimed the right furiously; they desired, were it through fear and trembling, to force
the human race into paradise. They seemed barbarians, and they were saviours. With the mask of
night they demanded the light.

In contrast with these men, wild, we admit, and terrible, but wild and terrible for the good,
there are other men, smiling, embroidered, gilded, beribboned, bestarred, in silk stockings, in
white feathers, in yellow gloves, in varnished shoes, who, leaning upon a velvet table by the
corner of a marble mantel, softly insist upon the maintenance and the preservation of the past,
the middle ages, divine right, fanaticism, ignorance, slavery, the death penalty, and war, glor-
ifying politely and in mild tones the sabre, the stake, and the scaffold. As for us, if we were
compelled to choose between the barbarians of civilisation, and the civilisees of barbarism, we
would choose the barbarians.

But, thanks to heaven, other choice is possible. No abrupt fall is necessary, forward more than
backward. Neither despotism, nor terrorism. We desire progress with gentle slope.

God provides for this. The smoothing of acclivities is the whole policy of God.

VI. ENJOLRAS AND HIS LIEUTENANTS

NOT far from this period, Enjorlas, in view of possible events, took a sort of mysterious account
of stock.

All were in conventicle at the Cafe Musain.

Enjorlas said, mingling with his words a few semi-enigmatic but significant metaphors.

It is well to know where we are and on whom we can rely. It we desire fighting men, we must make
them. Have the wherewith to strike. That can do no harm. Travellers have a better chance of cata-
log a thrust of a horn when there are bulls in the road than when there are none. Let us then take
a little account of the herd. Now many are there of us? We cannot put this work off till to-morrow.
Revolutionists ought always to be ready; progress has no tine to lose. Let us not trust to the mo-
ment. Let us not be taken unprepared-We must go over all the seams which we have made, and see if
they bold. This business should be probed to the bottom to-day. Courfeyrac, you will see the Poly-
technicians. It is their day out. To-day, Wednesday. Feuilly, will you not see the men of the Gla-
ciere? Combeferre has promised me to go to Piepus. There is really an excellent swarm there. Heb-
erel will visit the Estrapade. Prouvaire, the mason; are growing lukewarre; you will bring us news
from the lodge in the Rue de Grenelle Saint Honors. Jot} will go to Dupuytren's dini9u4 and feel
the pulse of the Medical School. Bossuet will make a bilk tour in the Palace of Justice and chat
with the young lawyers.' I will take charge of the Cougourde."

"Then it is all arranged," said Courfeyrac.

"No."

"What more is there then?"

"A very important thing."

"What is it?" inquired Combeferre.

"The Barrier du Maine," answered Enjolras.

Enjoins remained a moment, as it were, absorbed in his reflections, then resumed:

"At the Barriere du Maine there are marble cutters, painters, assistants in sculptors' studios. It is
an enthusiastic family. but subject to chills. I do not know what has ailed them for some time. They.
are thinking of other things. They are fading out. They spend their time in playing dominoes. Some-
body must go and talk to them a little, and firmly too. They meet at Riche feu's. They can be found
their between noon and one o'clock. We must blow upon these embers. I had counted on that absent-
minded Marius for this, for on the whole he is good, but he does not come any more. I must have some-
body for the Earriere du Maine. I have nobody left."

"I," said Grantaire, "I am here."

"You?"

"I."

"You to indoctrinate republicans! you, to warm up, in the name of principles, hearts that have grown
cold!"

"Why not?"

"Is it possible that you can be good for anything?'

"Yes, I have a vague ambition for it," said Grantaire. "You don't believe in anything."

"I believe in you."

"Grantaire, do you want to do me a service?"

"Anything. Polish your boots."

"Well, don't meddle with our affairs. Sleep off your bitters."

"You are an ingrate, Enjorlas."

"You would be a fine man to go to the Barriere du Maine! you would be capable of it!"

"I am capable of going down the Rue des Gras of crossing the Place Saint Michel, of striking off
through the Rue Monsieur le Prince, of taking the Rue de Vaugirard, of passing the Cannes, of turn-
ing into the Rue d'Assas, of reaching the Rue du Cherche Midi, of leaving behind me the Conseil de
Guerre, of hurrying through the Rue des Vieilles Tuileries, of striding through the Boulevard, of
following the Chaussee du Maine, of crossing over the Barriere, and of entering Richefeu's. I am
capable of that. My shoes are capable of it."

"Do you know anything about these comrades at Richefeu's?"

"Not much. We are on good terms, though."

"What will you say to them?"

"I will talk to them about Robespierre, faith. About Danton, about principles."

"You!"

"I. But you don't do me justice. When I am about it, I am terrible. I have read Prudhomme, I know
the Contrat Social, I know my Constitution of the year Two by heart. 'The Liberty of the citizen
ends where the Liberty of another citizen begins.' Do you take me for a brute? I have an old assignat
in my drawer. The Rights of Man, the sovereignty of the people, zounds! I am even a little of a Heb-
ertist. I can repeat, for six hours at a time, watch in hand, superb things."

"Be serious," said Enjolras.

"I am savage," answered Grantaire.

Enjolras thought for a few seconds, and made the gesture of a man who forms his resolution.

"Grantaire," said he gravely. "I consent to try you. You shall go to the Barriere du Maine."

Grantaire lived in a furnished room quite near the Cafe Musain.

He went out, and came back in five minutes: He had been home to put on a Robespierre waistcoat.

"Red," said he as he came in, looking straight at Enjoins. Theaith.the flat of his.huge hand, be
smoothedthe two scald points of his waistcoat over his breast.

And, approaching Enjoins, he whispered in his car:

"Set your mind at ease."

He jammed down his hat, resolutely, and went out.

A quarter of an hour later, the back room of the Cafe Magid was deserted. All the Friends of the A B C
had gone, each his on way, to their business. Enjoins, who had reserved the Cougourde for himself, went
out last.

Those of the Courgourde of Aix who were at Paris met at that time on the Plain of Issy, in one of the
abandoned quarries so numerous on that side of Paris.

Enjoins, on his way towards this place of rendezvous, passed the situation in review. The gravity of
events was plainly visible. When events, premonitory of some latent social malady, are moving heavily
along, the least complication stops them and shackles them. A phenomenon whence come overthrows and
new births. Enjolras caught glimpses of a luminous uprising under the dark skirts of the future. Who knows?
the moment was perhaps approaching. The people seizing their rights again, what a beautiful spectacle!
the Revolution majestically resuming possession of France, and saying to the world: to be continued to-
morrow! Enjolras was content. The furnace was heating. He had, at that very instant, a powder-train of
friends extended over Paris. He was composing in his thoughts with the philosophic and penetrating elo-
quence of Combeferre, the cosmopolitan enthusiasm of Feuilly, Courfeyrac's animation, Bahorel's laughter,
Jean Prouvaire's melancholy, Joly's science, and Bossuet's sarcasms, a sort of electric spark taking fire
in all directions at once. All in the work. Surely, the result would answer to the effort. This was well.
This led him to think of Grantaire. "Stop," said he to himself, "the Derriere du Maine hardly takes me
out my way. Suppose I go as far as Richefeu's? Let us get a glimpse of what Grantaire is doing, and how
he is getting along."

One o'clock sounded from the belfry of Vaugirard when Enjolras reached the Richefeu smoking-room. He
pushed open the door, went in, folded his arms, letting the door swing to so that a lift his shoulders, and
looked into the room full of tables, men, and smoke.

A voice was ringing out in the mist, sharply answered by anoather voice. It was Grantaire talking with
an adversary whom he found.

Grantaire was seated, opposite another figure, at a table of Saint Anne marble strewed with bran, and dot-
ted with dominoes: he was striking the marble with his fist, and what Enjolras heard was this "Double six."

"Four."

"The beast! I can't play."

"You are done for. Two."

"Six."

"Three."

"Ace."

"It is my Jay."

"Four points."

"Hardly."

"Yours."

"I made an awful blunder."

"You are doing well."

"Fifteen."

"Seven more."

"That makes me twenty-two. (Musing.) Twenty-two!"

"You didn't expect the double six. If I had laid it in the begining, it would have changed the whole game."

"Two again." '

"Ace."

"Ace! Well, five."

"I haven't any."

"You laid,. I believe?"

"Yes."

"Blank."

"Has he any chance! Ah! you have one chance! (Long reverie)

"Ace."

"Neither a five, nor an ace. That is bothering for you."

"Domino."

"Dogs on it!"