2.M.4.5. ENLARGEMENT OF HORIZON
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
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!"
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."