CHAPTER III.
THE EXTREME BRINK.
Marius had reached the markets; there all was calmer, darker, and evenmore motionless than in the neighboring streets. It seemed as if thefrozen peace of the tomb had issued from the ground and spread overthe sky. A ruddy tinge, however, brought out from the black backgroundthe tall roofs of the houses which barred the Rue de la Chanvrerie onthe side of St. Eustache. It was the reflection of the torch burningon the Corinth barricade, and Marius walked toward that ruddy hue;it led him to the Marché aux Poirées, and he caught a glimpse of theRue des Prêcheurs, into which he turned. The sentry of the insurgentswatching at the other end did not notice him; he felt himself quiteclose to what he was seeking, and he walked on tiptoe. He thus reachedthe corner of that short piece of the Mondétour lane which was, as willbe remembered, the sole communication which Enjolras had maintainedwith the outer world. At the corner of the last house on his left hestopped and peeped into the lane. A little beyond the dark cornerformed by the lane and the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which formed a largepatch of shadow in which he was himself buried, he noticed a littlelight on the pavement, a portion of a wine-shop, a lamp flickering ina sort of shapeless niche, and men crouching down with guns on theirknees,--all this was scarce ten yards from him, and was the interior ofthe barricade. The houses that lined the right-hand side of the lanehid from him the rest of the wine-shop, the large barricade, and theflag. Marius had but one step to take, and then the unhappy young mansat down on a post, folded his arms, and thought of his father.
He thought of that heroic Colonel Pontmercy, who had been such a proudsoldier, who had defended under the Republic the frontier of France,and touched under the Empire the frontier of Asia; who had seen Genoa,Alexandria, Milan, Turin, Madrid, Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, and Moscow;who had left on all the victorious battle-fields of Europe drops of thesame blood which Marius had in his veins; who had grown gray before agein discipline and command; who had lived with his waist-belt buckled,his epaulettes falling on his chest, his cockade blackened by smoke,his brow wrinkled by his helmet, in barracks, in camp, in bivouacs, andin hospitals, and who, at the expiration of twenty years, had returnedfrom the great wars with his scarred cheek and smiling face, simple,tranquil, admirable, pure as an infant, having done everything forFrance and nothing against her. He said to himself that his own dayhad now arrived, that his hour had at length struck, that after hisfather he too was going to be brave, intrepid, and bold, to rush tomeet bullets, offer his chest to the bayonets, shed his blood, seekthe enemy, seek death; that he in his turn was about to wage war andgo into the battle-field, and that the battle he would enter was thestreet, and the war he was about to wage civil war! He saw civil waropening like a gulf before him, and that he was going to fell into it;then he shuddered.
He thought of his fathers sword, which his grandfather had sold to theold-clothes dealer, and which he had so painfully regretted. He saidto himself that this valiant and chaste sword had done well to escapefrom him, and disappear angrily in the darkness; that it fled away thusbecause it was intelligent, and foresaw the future,--the riots, the warof gutters, the war of paving-stones, fusillades from cellar-traps,and blows dealt and received from behind; that, coming from Marengoand Austerlitz, it was unwilling to go to the Rue de la Chanvrerie,and after what it had done with the father refused to do that with theson! He said to himself that if that sword had been here, if, afterreceiving it at his dead fathers bedside, he had dared to take it, andcarry it into this nocturnal combat between Frenchmen in the streets,it would assuredly have burned his hands, and have flashed beforehim like the glaive of the archangel! He said to himself that it wasfortunate it was not there, but had disappeared,--that this was well,this was just, that his grandfather had been the true guardian of hisfathers glory, and that it was better for the Colonel's sword to havebeen put up to auction, sold to the second-hand dealer, or broken upas old iron, than come to-day to make the flank of the country bleed.And then he began weeping bitterly. It was horrible, but what was heto do? He could not live without Cosette, and since she had departedall left him was to die. Had he not pledged her his word of honor thathe would die? She had gone away knowing this, and it was plain thatshe was pleased with Marius's dying; and then it was clear that she nolonger loved him, since she had gone away thus without warning him,without a word, without a letter, and yet she knew his address! Of whatuse was it to live; and why should he live now? And then, to have comeso far and then recoil! to have approached the danger and run away!to have come to look at the barricade and then slip off! to slip off,trembling and saying, "After all, I have had enough of that I have seenit, that is sufficient; it is civil war, and I will be off!" To abandonhis friends who expected him, who perhaps had need of him, who were ahandful against an army! To be false to everything at once,--to love,to friendship, to his word! to give his poltroonery the pretext ofpatriotism! Oh, that was impossible, and if his father's phantom werethere in the shadows, and saw him recoil, it would lash him with theflat of its sabre, and cry to him, "Forward, coward!"
A prey to this oscillation of his thoughts, he hung his head, butsuddenly raised it again, for a species of splendid rectificationhad just taken place in his mind. There is a dilation of thoughtpeculiar to the vicinity of the tomb; and to be near death makesa man see correctly. The vision of the action upon which he sawhimself perhaps on the point of entering, no longer appeared to himlamentable, but superb; the street was become transfigured by someinternal labor of the soul before his mental eye. All the tumultuousnotes of interrogation of reverie crowded back upon him, but withouttroubling him, and he did not leave a single one unanswered. Why wouldhis father be indignant? Are there not cases in which; insurrectionattains to the dignity of duty? What was there degrading for the sonof Colonel Pontmercy in the combat which was about to begin? It is nolonger Montmirail or Champaubert, it is something else; it is no longera question of a sacred territory, but of a holy idea. The countrycomplains; be it so, but humanity applauds. Is it true, besides, thatthe country complains? France bleeds, but liberty smiles, and on seeingthe smile of liberty France forgets her wound. And then, regardingthings from a higher point still, what did people mean by talking of acivil war?
What is the meaning of civil war? Is there such a thing as a foreignwar? Is not every war between men a war between brothers? War can onlybe qualified by its object, and there is neither foreign war nor civilwar, there is only just or unjust war. Up to the day when the greathuman concordat is concluded, war, at least that which is the effortof the hurrying future against the laggard past, may be necessary.What reproach can be urged against such a war? War does not become adisgrace, or the sword a dagger, until it assassinates right, progress,reason, civilization, and truth. In such a case, whether civil waror foreign war, it is iniquitous, and is called crime. Beyond thatholy thing justice, what right would one form of war have to despiseanother? By what right would the sword of Washington ignore the pike ofCamille Desmoulins? Which is the greater, Leonidas contending againstthe foreigner, or Timoleon against the tyrant? One is the defender,the other is the liberator. Must we brand, without investigating theobject, every taking up of arms in the interior of a city? If so, markwith contumely Brutus, Marcel, Arnould of Blankenheim, and Coligny. Awar of thickets--a street war? Why not? Such was the war of Ambiorix,of Artevelde, of Marnix, and Pelagius. But Ambiorix struggled againstRome, Artevelde against France, Marnix against Spain, and Pelagiusagainst the Moors,--all against the foreigner. Well, monarchy is theforeigner, oppression is the foreigner, divine right is the foreigner,and despotism violates the moral frontier as invasion does thegeographical frontier. Expelling the tyrant or expelling the Englishis, in either case, a reconquest of territory. An hour arrives when aprotest is insufficient; after philosophy, action is needed; livingstrength completes what the idea has sketched out: Prometheus vinctusbegins, Aristogiton ends, the Encyclopædia enlightens minds, and August10 electrifies them. After Æschylus, Thrasybulus; after Diderot,Danton. Mul
titudes have a tendency to accept the master, and their massdeposits apathy. A crowd is easily led into habits of obedience. Thesemust be stirred up, impelled, and roughly treated by the very blessingof their deliverance, their eyes be hurt by the truth, and lighthurled at them in terrible handfuls. They must themselves be to someextent thunderstruck by their own salvation, for such a dazzling awakesthem. Hence comes the necessity of tocsins and wars: it is necessarythat great combatants should rise, illumine nations by audacity, andshake up that sorry humanity over which divine right, Cæsarian glory,strength, fanaticism, irresponsible power, and absolute majestiescast a shadow,--a mob stupidly occupied in contemplating these gloomytriumphs of the night in their crepuscular splendor. But what? Whomare you talking of? Do you call Louis Philippe the tyrant? No; no morethan Louis XVI. These are both what history is accustomed to callgood kings; but principles cannot be broken up, the logic of truth isrectilinear, and its peculiarity to be deficient in complaining. Noconcession therefore; every encroachment on man must be repressed:there is the right divine in Louis XVI., there is the "because aBourbon" in Louis Philippe; both represent to a certain extent theconfiscation of right, and they must be combated in order to sweep awayuniversal usurpation; it must be so, for France is always the one whobegins, and when the master falls in France he falls everywhere. In aword, what cause is more just, and consequently what war is greater,than to re-establish social truth, give back its throne to liberty,restore the people to the people and the sovereignty to man, to replacethe crown on the head of France, to restore reason and equity intheir plenitude, to suppress every germ of antagonism by giving backindividuality, to annihilate the obstacle which the royalty offers tothe immense human concord, and to place the human race once again on alevel with right? Such wars construct peace. An enormous fortalice ofprejudice, privileges, superstitions, falsehoods, exactions, abuses,violences, iniquities, and darknesses, is still standing on theearth with its towers of hatred, and it must be thrown down, and themonstrous mass crumble away. To conquer at Austerlitz is great, but totake the Bastille is immense.
No one but will have noticed in himself that the mind--and this is themarvel of its unity complicated with ubiquity--has the strange aptitudeof reasoning almost coldly in the most violent extremities, and itoften happens that weird passions and deep despair, in the very agonyof their blackest soliloquies, handle subjects and discuss theses.Logic is mingled with the convulsion, and the thread of syllogism runswithout breaking through the storm of the thoughts: such was Marius'sstate of mind. While thinking thus, crushed but resolute, and yethesitating and shuddering at what he was going to do, his eyes wanderedabout the interior of the barricade. The insurgents were conversingin whispers, without moving, and that almost silence which marks thelast phase of expectation was perceptible. Above them, at a third-floorwindow, Marius distinguished a species of spectator or of witness whoseemed singularly attentive; it was the porter killed by Le Cabuc. Frombelow, this head could be vaguely perceived in the reflection of thetorch burning on the barricade, and nothing was stranger in this denseand vacillating light than this motionless, livid, and amazed face,with its bristling hair, open and fixed eyes, and gaping mouth, bendingover the street in an attitude of curiosity. It might be said that thisdead man was contemplating those who were going to die. A long streamof blood, which had flowed from his head, descended from the window tothe first-floor, where it stopped.
BOOK XIV.
THE GRANDEUR OF DESPAIR.