________________________________________________
_ The shocks of youthful minds among themselves have this admirable
property, that one can never foresee the spark, nor divine the
lightning flash. What will dart out presently? No one knows.
The burst of laughter starts from a tender feeling.
At the moment of jest, the serious makes its entry. Impulses depend on
the first chance word. The spirit of each is sovereign, jest suffices
to open the field to the unexpected. These are conversations
with abrupt turns, in which the perspective changes suddenly.
Chance is the stage-manager of such conversations.
A severe thought, starting oddly from a clash of words, suddenly
traversed the conflict of quips in which Grantaire, Bahorel,
Prouvaire, Bossuet, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac were confusedly fencing.
How does a phrase crop up in a dialogue? Whence comes it that it
suddenly impresses itself on the attention of those who hear it?
We have just said, that no one knows anything about it. In the
midst of the uproar, Bossuet all at once terminated some apostrophe
to Combeferre, with this date:--
"June 18th, 1815, Waterloo."
At this name of Waterloo, Marius, who was leaning his elbows on a table,
beside a glass of water, removed his wrist from beneath his chin,
and began to gaze fixedly at the audience.
"Pardieu!" exclaimed Courfeyrac ("Parbleu" was falling into disuse
at this period), "that number 18 is strange and strikes me. It is
Bonaparte's fatal number. Place Louis in front and Brumaire behind,
you have the whole destiny of the man, with this significant peculiarity,
that the end treads close on the heels of the commencement."
Enjolras, who had remained mute up to that point, broke the silence
and addressed this remark to Combeferre:--
"You mean to say, the crime and the expiation."
This word crime overpassed the measure of what Marius, who was
already greatly agitated by the abrupt evocation of Waterloo,
could accept.
He rose, walked slowly to the map of France spread out on the wall,
and at whose base an island was visible in a separate compartment,
laid his finger on this compartment and said:--
"Corsica, a little island which has rendered France very great."
This was like a breath of icy air. All ceased talking. They felt
that something was on the point of occurring.
Bahorel, replying to Bossuet, was just assuming an attitude
of the torso to which he was addicted. He gave it up to listen.
Enjolras, whose blue eye was not fixed on any one, and who seemed
to be gazing at space, replied, without glancing at Marius:--
"France needs no Corsica to be great. France is great because she
is France. Quia nomina leo."
Marius felt no desire to retreat; he turned towards Enjolras,
and his voice burst forth with a vibration which came from a quiver
of his very being:--
"God forbid that I should diminish France! But amalgamating Napoleon
with her is not diminishing her. Come! let us argue the question.
I am a new comer among you, but I will confess that you amaze me.
Where do we stand? Who are we? Who are you? Who am I? Let us come
to an explanation about the Emperor. I hear you say Buonaparte,
accenting the u like the Royalists. I warn you that my grandfather
does better still; he says Buonaparte'. I thought you were
young men. Where, then, is your enthusiasm? And what are you doing
with it? Whom do you admire, if you do not admire the Emperor?
And what more do you want? If you will have none of that great man,
what great men would you like? He had everything. He was complete.
He had in his brain the sum of human faculties. He made codes
like Justinian, he dictated like Caesar, his conversation was mingled
with the lightning-flash of Pascal, with the thunderclap of Tacitus,
he made history and he wrote it, his bulletins are Iliads, he combined
the cipher of Newton with the metaphor of Mahomet, he left behind
him in the East words as great as the pyramids, at Tilsit he taught
Emperors majesty, at the Academy of Sciences he replied to Laplace,
in the Council of State be held his own against Merlin, he gave a soul
to the geometry of the first, and to the chicanery of the last,
he was a legist with the attorneys and sidereal with the astronomers;
like Cromwell blowing out one of two candles, he went to the Temple
to bargain for a curtain tassel; he saw everything; he knew everything;
which did not prevent him from laughing good-naturedly beside the
cradle of his little child; and all at once, frightened Europe lent
an ear, armies put themselves in motion, parks of artillery rumbled,
pontoons stretched over the rivers, clouds of cavalry galloped in
the storm, cries, trumpets, a trembling of thrones in every direction,
the frontiers of kingdoms oscillated on the map, the sound of
a superhuman sword was heard, as it was drawn from its sheath;
they beheld him, him, rise erect on the horizon with a blazing brand
in his hand, and a glow in his eyes, unfolding amid the thunder,
his two wings, the grand army and the old guard, and he was the archangel
of war!"
All held their peace, and Enjolras bowed his head. Silence always
produces somewhat the effect of acquiescence, of the enemy being
driven to the wall. Marius continued with increased enthusiasm,
and almost without pausing for breath:--
"Let us be just, my friends! What a splendid destiny for a nation
to be the Empire of such an Emperor, when that nation is France
and when it adds its own genius to the genius of that man! To appear
and to reign, to march and to triumph, to have for halting-places
all capitals, to take his grenadiers and to make kings of them,
to decree the falls of dynasties, and to transfigure Europe at
the pace of a charge; to make you feel that when you threaten
you lay your hand on the hilt of the sword of God; to follow
in a single man, Hannibal, Caesar, Charlemagne; to be the people
of some one who mingles with your dawns the startling announcement
of a battle won, to have the cannon of the Invalides to rouse you
in the morning, to hurl into abysses of light prodigious words
which flame forever, Marengo, Arcola, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram!
To cause constellations of victories to flash forth at each instant
from the zenith of the centuries, to make the French Empire a pendant
to the Roman Empire, to be the great nation and to give birth to
the grand army, to make its legions fly forth over all the earth,
as a mountain sends out its eagles on all sides to conquer,
to dominate, to strike with lightning, to be in Europe a sort
of nation gilded through glory, to sound athwart the centuries
a trumpet-blast of Titans, to conquer the world twice, by conquest
and by dazzling, that is sublime; and what greater thing is there?"
"To be free," said Combeferre.
Marius lowered his head in his turn; that cold and simple
word had traversed his epic effusion like a blade of steel,
and he felt it vanishing within him. When he raised his eyes,
Combeferre was no longer there. Probably satisfied with his reply
to the apotheosis, he had just taken his departure, and all,
with the exception of Enjolras, had followed him. The room had
been emptied. Enjolras, left alone with Marius, was gazing gravely
at him. Marius, however, having rallied his ideas to some extent,
did not consider himself beaten; there lingered in him a trace
of inward fermentation which was on the point, no doubt,
of translating itself into syllogisms arrayed against Enjolras,
when all of a sudden, they heard some one singing on the stairs
as he went. It was Combeferre, and this is what he was singing:--
"Si Cesar m'avait donne[25]
La gloire et la guerre,
Et qu'il me fallait quitter
L'amour de ma mere,
Je dirais au grand Cesar:
Reprends ton sceptre et ton char,
J'aime mieux ma mere, o gue!
J'aime mieux ma mere!"
[25] If Cesar had given me glory and war, and I were obliged
to quit my mother's love, I would say to great Caesar, "Take back
thy sceptre and thy chariot; I prefer the love of my mother."
The wild and tender accents with which Combeferre sang communicated
to this couplet a sort of strange grandeur. Marius, thoughtfully,
and with his eyes diked on the ceiling, repeated almost mechanically:
"My mother?--"
At that moment, he felt Enjolras' hand on his shoulder.
"Citizen," said Enjolras to him, "my mother is the Republic." _
Read next: VOLUME III: BOOK FOURTH - THE FRIENDS OF THE ABC: CHAPTER VI. Res Angusta
Read previous: VOLUME III: BOOK FOURTH - THE FRIENDS OF THE ABC: CHAPTER IV. The Back Room of the Cafe Musain
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