Les Miserables (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Victor Hugo & Christine Donougher

Author:Victor Hugo & Christine Donougher [Hugo, Victor & Donougher, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Classics, Historical, General
ISBN: 9780143107569
Google: dyKMDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2015-11-15T08:00:00+00:00

II

Stitched Together

But the work of the wise is one thing, the work of the astute, another.

The Revolution of 1830 quickly came to a halt.

As soon as a revolution runs aground the astute break up the beached vessel.

The astute in our century have conferred on themselves the title of statesmen, with the result that this word ‘statesmen’ has ended up becoming something of a slang word. After all, let us not forget that where there is only astuteness there is inevitably pettiness. To say ‘the astute’ is another way of saying ‘the mediocre’.

Similarly, to say ‘statesmen’ is sometimes tantamount to saying ‘traitors’.

According to the astute, then, revolutions like the July Revolution are severed arteries. Prompt ligature is needed. Too grandly proclaimed, right destabilizes. So, once right has been asserted, the state must be strengthened. After freedom is secured, thoughts must turn to authority.

At this point the wise have not as yet parted company with the astute, but they are beginning to be wary. Authority, agreed. But firstly, what is authority? Secondly, where does it come from?

The astute do not seem to hear this murmured objection, and press on with their scheme.

According to those politicians expert at putting the mask of necessity on advantageous fictions, the first requirement of a nation after a revolution, when that nation belongs to a monarchic continent, is to acquire a dynasty. That way, they say, it can have peace after its revolution, in other words time to dress its wounds and rebuild its house. A dynasty hides the scaffolding and shields the ambulance.

Now, it is not always easy to acquire a dynasty.

If need be, any man of genius or even any self-made adventurer will make a king. In the first case you have Napoleon, in the second, Iturbide.

But not just any family will make a dynasty. There is of necessity a certain element of antiquity in a lineage, and the stamp of centuries cannot be improvised.

If you put yourself – with all due reservations, of course – in the position of ‘statesmen’: after a revolution, what are the attributes of the king who emerges from it? He may be, and it is an advantage if he is, a revolutionary, that is to say, he personally took part in that revolution, he had a hand in it, he committed himself to it or distinguished himself in it, he handled the axe or wielded the sword of revolution.

What are the attributes of a dynasty? It must be national, that is to say, revolutionary at a distance, not through deeds done but ideas accepted. It must consist of the past and be historic, consist of the future and be sympathetic.

All this explains why first revolutions are satisfied with finding a man, Cromwell or Napoleon, and why second revolutions are absolutely determined to find a family, the House of Brunswick or the House of Orléans.

Royal houses are like those Indian fig trees whose every branch, bending down to the earth, takes root and becomes another fig tree. Each branch may grow into a dynasty.

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