Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [390]
This reminiscence, however, was misty and indistinct, like all his ideas. It was not an affirmation which he made to himself, it was a question which he put: “Is not this that inspector of police who told me his name was Javert?”
Perhaps there was still time to interfere for this man? But he must first know if it were indeed that Javert.
Marius called to Enjolras, who had just taken his place at the other end of the barricade.
“Enjolras!”
“What?”
“What is that man’s name?”
“Who?”
“The police officer. Do you know his name?”
“Of course. He told us.”
“What is his name?”
“Javert.”
Marius sprang up.
At that moment they heard the pistol-shot.
Jean Valjean reappeared and cried: “It is done.”
A dreary chill passed through the heart of Marius.
17 (20)
THE DEAD ARE RIGHT AND THE LIVING ARE NOT WRONG
THE DEATH-AGONY of the barricade was approaching. When the condition of affairs was not ripe, when the insurrection was not decidedly acceptable, when the mass disavowed the movement, it was all over with the combatants, the city changed into a desert about the revolt, souls were chilled, asy lums were walled up, and the street became a defile to aid the army in taking the barricade.
A people cannot be surprised into a more rapid progress than it wills. Woe to him who attempts to force its hand! A people does not allow itself to be used. Then it abandons the insurrection to itself. The insurgents become pestiferous. A house is an escarpment, a door is a refusal, a façade is a wall. This wall sees, hears, and will not. It might open and save you. No. This wall is a judge. It looks upon you and condemns you. How gloomy are these closed houses! They seem dead, they are living. Life, which is as it were suspended in them, still exists. Nobody has come out of them for twenty-four hours, but nobody is missing. In the interior of this rock, people go and come, they lie down, they get up; they are at home there; they drink and eat; they are afraid there, a fearful thing! Fear excuses this terrible inhospitality; it tempers it with timidity, a mitigating circumstance. Sometimes even, and this has been seen, fear becomes passion; fright may change into fury, as prudence into rage; hence this saying so profound: The madmen of moderation. There are flamings of supreme dismay from which rage springs like a dismal smoke. “What do these people want? They are never contented. They compromise peaceable men as if we had not had revolution enough like this! What do they come here for? Let them get out of it themselves. So much the worse for them. It is their own fault. They have only got what they deserve. It doesn’t concern us. Here is our poor street riddled with balls. They are a parcel of scamps. Above all, don’t open the door.” And the house puts on the semblance of a tomb. The insurgent before that door is in his last agony; he sees the grapeshot and the drawn sabres coming; if he calls, he knows that they hear him, but that they will not come; there are walls which might protect him, there are men who might save him; and those walls have ears of flesh, and those men have bowels of stone.
Let us acknowledge it without bitterness, the individual has his distinct interest, and may without offence set up that interest and defend it: the present has its excusable quantum of selfishness; the life of the moment has its rights, and is not bound to sacrifice itself continually to the future. The generation which has now its turn of passing over the earth is not compelled to abridge it for the generations, its equals, after all, which are to have their turn afterwards. “I exist,” murmurs that somebody whose name is All. “I am young and I am in love, I am old and I want to rest, I am the father of a family, I am working, I am prospering, I am doing a good business, I have houses to rent, I have money in the government, I am happy. I have a wife and children, I love all this, I desire to live, let me alone.”