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 newcomer 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 _Buonaparté_’. 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 Cæsar, 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 he 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, Cæsar, 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 César m’avait donné
La gloire et la guerre,
Et qu’il me fallait quitter
L’amour de ma mère,
Je dirais au grand César:
Reprends ton sceptre et ton char,
J’aime mieux ma mère, ô gué!
J’aime mieux ma mère!”25
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.”