3.V.1.5. THE HORIZON WHICH ONE BEHOLDS FROM THE SUMMIT OF A
BARRICADE
THE situation of all in that fatal hour and that pitiless
place, had as result and culminating point Enjolras' supreme
melancholy.
Enjolras bore within him the plenitude of the revolution;
he was incomplete, however, so far as the absolute can be so;
he had too much of Saint-Just about him, and not enough of
Anacharsis Cloots; still, his mind, in the society of the
Friends of the A B C, had ended by undergoing a certain
polarization from Combeferre's ideas; for some time past, he
had been gradually emerging from the narrow form of dogma,
and had allowed himself to incline to the broadening influence
of progress, and he had come to accept, as a definitive
and magnificent evolution, the transformation of the great
French Republic, into the immense human republic. As far
as the immediate means were concerned, a violent situation
being given, he wished to be violent; on that point, he never
varied; and he remained of that epic and redoubtable school
which is summed up in the words: "Eighty-three." Enjolras
was standing erect on the staircase of paving-stones, one
elbow resting on the stock of his gun. He was engaged in
thought; he quivered, as at the passage of prophetic breaths;
places where death is have these effects of tripods. A sort of
stifled fire darted from his eyes, which were filled with an
inward look. All at once he threw back his head, his blond
locks fell back like those of an angel on the sombre quadriga
made of stars, they were like the mane of a startled lion in the
flaming of an halo, and Enjolras cried:
"Citizens, do you picture the future to yourselves? The
streets of cities inundated with light, green branches on the
thresholds, nations sisters, men just, old men blessing children,
the past loving the present, thinkers entirely at liberty,
believers on terms of full equality, for religion heaven,
God the direct priest, human conscience become an altar, no
more hatreds, the fraternity of the workshop and the school,
for sole penalty and recompense fame, work for all, right for
all, peace over all, no more bloodshed, no more wars, happy
mothers! To conquer matter is the first step; to realize the
ideal is the second. Reflect on what progress has already
accomplished. Formerly, the first human races beheld with
terror the hydra pass before their eyes, breathing on the
waters, the dragon which vomited flame, the griffin who was
the monster of the air, and who flew with the wings of an
eagle and the talons of a tiger; fearful beasts which were
above man. Man, nevertheless, spread his snares, consecrated
by intelligence, and finally conquered these monsters. We
have vanquished the hydra, and it is called the locomotive;
we are on the point of vanquishing the griffin, we already
grasp it, and it is called the balloon. On the day when this
Promethean task shall be accomplished, and when man shall
have definitely harnessed to his will the triple Chimaera of
antiquity, the hydra, the dragon and the griffin, he will be
the master of water, fire, and of air, and he will be for the
rest of animated creation that which the ancient gods formerly
were to him. Courage, and onward! Citizens, whither
are we going? To science made government, to the force of
things become the sole public force, to the natural law,
having in itself its sanction and its penalty and promulgating
itself by evidence, to a dawn of truth corresponding
to a dawn of day. We are advancing to the union of peoples;
we are advancing to the unity of man. No more fictions;
no more parasites. The real governed by the true, that is the
goal. Civilization will hold its assizes at the summit of
Europe, and, later on, at the centre of continents, in a grand
parliament of the intelligence. Something similar has already
been seen. The amphictyons had two sittings a year, one at
Delphos the seat of the gods, the other at Thermopylae, the
place of heroes. Europe will have her amphictyons; the globe
will have its amphictyons. France bears this sublime future
in her breast. This is the gestation of the nineteenth century.
That which Greece sketched out is worthy of being finished
by France. Listen to me, you, Feuilly, valiant artisan,
man of the people. I revere you. Yes, you clearly behold
the future, yes, you are right. You had neither father nor
mother, Feuilly; you adopted humanity for your mother and
right for your father. You are about to die, that is to say
to triumph, here. Citizens, whatever happens to-day, through
our defeat as well as through our victory, it is a revolution
that we are about to create. As conflagrations light up a
whole city, so revolutions illuminate the whole human race.
And what is the revolution that we shall cause? I have just
told you, the Revolution of the True. From a political point
of view, there is but a single principle; the sovereignty of
man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself
is called Liberty. Where two or three of these sovereignties
are combined, the state begins. But in that association there
is no abdication. Each sovereignty concedes a certain quantity
of itself, for the purpose of forming the common right.
This quantity is the same for all of us. This identity of
concession
which each makes to all, is called Equality. Common
right is nothing else than the protection of all beaming on
the right of each. This protection of all over each is called
Fraternity. The point of intersection of all these assembled
sovereignties is called society. This intersection being a
junction,
this point is a knot. Hence what is called the social
bond. Some say social contract; which is the same thing, the
word contract being etymologically formed with the idea of a
bond. Let us come to an understanding about equality; for,
if liberty is the summit, equality is the base. Equality,
citizens,
is not wholly a surface vegetation, a society of great
blades of grass and tiny oaks; a proximity of jealousies which
render each other null and void; legally speaking, it is all
aptitudes possessed of the same opportunity; politically, it is
all votes possessed of the same weight; religiously, it is all
consciences possessed of the same right. Equality has an
organ: gratuitous and obligatory instruction. The right to
the alphabet, that is where the beginning must be made. The
primary school imposed on all, the secondary school offered
to all, that is the law. From an identical school, an identical
society will spring. Yes, instruction! light! light! everything
comes from light, and to it everything returns. Citizens, the
nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be
happy. Then, there will be nothing more like the history
of old, we shall no longer, as to-day, have to fear a conquest,
an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations, arms in hand,
an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of
kings, on a birth in hereditary tyrannies, a partition of
peoples by a congress, a dismemberment because of the failure
of a dynasty, a combat of two religions meeting face to face,
like two bucks in the dark, on the bridge of the infinite; we
shall no longer have to fear famine, farming out, prostitution
arising from distress, misery from the failure of work and the
scaffold and the sword, and battles and the ruffianism of
chance in the forest of events. One might almost say: There
will be no more events. We shall be happy. The human
race will accomplish its law, as the terrestrial globe
accomplishes its law; harmony will be re-established between
the soul and the star; the soul will gravitate around the truth,
as the planet around the light. Friends, the present hour in
which I am addressing you, is a gloomy hour; but these are
terrible purchases of the future. A revolution is a toll. Oh!
the human race will be delivered, raised up, consoled! We
affirm it on this barrier. Whence should proceed that cry of
love, if not from the heights of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, this
is the point of junction, of those who think and of those who
suffer; this barricade is not made of paving-stones, nor of
joists, nor of bits of iron; it is made of two heaps, a heap of
ideas, and a heap of woes. Here misery meets the ideal. The
day embraces the night, and says to it: 'I am about to die,
and thou shalt be born again with me.' From the embrace
of all desolations faith leaps forth. Sufferings bring hither
their agony and ideas their immortality. This agony and
this immortality are about to join and constitute our death.
Brothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future,
and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn."
Enjolras paused rather than became silent; his lips
continued
to move silently, as though he were talking to himself,
which caused them all to gaze attentively at him, in the endeavor
to hear more. There was no applause; but they whispered
together for a long time. Speech being a breath, the
rustling of intelligences resembles the rustling of leaves.