THE EXTREME BRINK.
Marius had reached the markets; there all was calmer, darker, and even more motionless than in the neighboring streets. It seemed as if the frozen peace of the tomb had issued from the ground and spread over the sky. A ruddy tinge, however, brought out from the black background the tall roofs of the houses which barred the Rue de la Chanvrerie on the side of St. Eustache. It was the reflection of the torch burning on the Corinth barricade, and Marius walked toward that ruddy hue; it led him to the Marché aux Poirées, and he caught a glimpse of the Rue des Prêcheurs, into which he turned. The sentry of the insurgents watching at the other end did not notice him; he felt himself quite close to what he was seeking, and he walked on tiptoe. He thus reached the corner of that short piece of the Mondétour lane which was, as will be remembered, the sole communication which Enjolras had maintained with the outer world. At the corner of the last house on his left he stopped and peeped into the lane. A little beyond the dark corner formed by the lane and the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which formed a large patch of shadow in which he was himself buried, he noticed a little light on the pavement, a portion of a wine-shop, a lamp flickering in a sort of shapeless niche, and men crouching down with guns on their knees,—all this was scarce ten yards from him, and was the interior of the barricade. The houses that lined the right-hand side of the lane hid from him the rest of the wine-shop, the large barricade, and the flag. Marius had but one step to take, and then the unhappy young man sat down on a post, folded his arms, and thought of his father.
He thought of that heroic Colonel Pontmercy, who had been such a proud soldier, who had defended under the Republic the frontier of France, and touched under the Empire the frontier of Asia; who had seen Genoa, Alexandria, Milan, Turin, Madrid, Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, and Moscow; who had left on all the victorious battle-fields of Europe drops of the same blood which Marius had in his veins; who had grown gray before age in discipline and command; who had lived with his waist-belt buckled, his epaulettes falling on his chest, his cockade blackened by smoke, his brow wrinkled by his helmet, in barracks, in camp, in bivouacs, and in hospitals, and who, at the expiration of twenty years, had returned from the great wars with his scarred cheek and smiling face, simple, tranquil, admirable, pure as an infant, having done everything for France and nothing against her. He said to himself that his own day had now arrived, that his hour had at length struck, that after his father he too was going to be brave, intrepid, and bold, to rush to meet bullets, offer his chest to the bayonets, shed his blood, seek the enemy, seek death; that he in his turn was about to wage war and go into the battle-field, and that the battle he would enter was the street, and the war he was about to wage civil war! He saw civil war opening like a gulf before him, and that he was going to fell into it; then he shuddered.
He thought of his fathers sword, which his grandfather had sold to the old-clothes dealer, and which he had so painfully regretted. He said to himself that this valiant and chaste sword had done well to escape from him, and disappear angrily in the darkness; that it fled away thus because it was intelligent, and foresaw the future,—the riots, the war of gutters, the war of paving-stones, fusillades from cellar-traps, and blows dealt and received from behind; that, coming from Marengo and Austerlitz, it was unwilling to go to the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and after what it had done with the father refused to do that with the son! He said to himself that if that sword had been here, if, after receiving it at his dead fathers bedside, he had dared to take it, and carry it into this nocturnal combat between Frenchmen in the streets, it would assuredly have burned his hands, and have flashed before him like the glaive of the archangel! He said to himself that it was fortunate it was not there, but had disappeared,—that this was well, this was just, that his grandfather had been the true guardian of his fathers glory, and that it was better for the Colonel's sword to have been put up to auction, sold to the second-hand dealer, or broken up as old iron, than come to-day to make the flank of the country bleed. And then he began weeping bitterly. It was horrible, but what was he to do? He could not live without Cosette, and since she had departed all left him was to die. Had he not pledged her his word of honor that he would die? She had gone away knowing this, and it was plain that she was pleased with Marius's dying; and then it was clear that she no longer loved him, since she had gone away thus without warning him, without a word, without a letter, and yet she knew his address! Of what use was it to live; and why should he live now? And then, to have come so far and then recoil! to have approached the danger and run away! to have come to look at the barricade and then slip off! to slip off, trembling and saying, "After all, I have had enough of that I have seen it, that is sufficient; it is civil war, and I will be off!" To abandon his friends who expected him, who perhaps had need of him, who were a handful against an army! To be false to everything at once,—to love, to friendship, to his word! to give his poltroonery the pretext of patriotism! Oh, that was impossible, and if his father's phantom were there in the shadows, and saw him recoil, it would lash him with the flat of its sabre, and cry to him, "Forward, coward!"
A prey to this oscillation of his thoughts, he hung his head, but suddenly raised it again, for a species of splendid rectification had just taken place in his mind. There is a dilation of thought peculiar to the vicinity of the tomb; and to be near death makes a man see correctly. The vision of the action upon which he saw himself perhaps on the point of entering, no longer appeared to him lamentable, but superb; the street was become transfigured by some internal labor of the soul before his mental eye. All the tumultuous notes of interrogation of reverie crowded back upon him, but without troubling him, and he did not leave a single one unanswered. Why would his father be indignant? Are there not cases in which; insurrection attains to the dignity of duty? What was there degrading for the son of Colonel Pontmercy in the combat which was about to begin? It is no longer Montmirail or Champaubert, it is something else; it is no longer a question of a sacred territory, but of a holy idea. The country complains; be it so, but humanity applauds. Is it true, besides, that the country complains? France bleeds, but liberty smiles, and on seeing the smile of liberty France forgets her wound. And then, regarding things from a higher point still, what did people mean by talking of a civil war?
What is the meaning of civil war? Is there such a thing as a foreign war? Is not every war between men a war between brothers? War can only be qualified by its object, and there is neither foreign war nor civil war, there is only just or unjust war. Up to the day when the great human concordat is concluded, war, at least that which is the effort of the hurrying future against the laggard past, may be necessary. What reproach can be urged against such a war? War does not become a disgrace, or the sword a dagger, until it assassinates right, progress, reason, civilization, and truth. In such a case, whether civil war or foreign war, it is iniquitous, and is called crime. Beyond that holy thing justice, what right would one form of war have to despise another? By what right would the sword of Washington ignore the pike of Camille Desmoulins? Which is the greater, Leonidas contending against the foreigner, or Timoleon against the tyrant? One is the defender, the other is the liberator. Must we brand, without investigating the object, every taking up of arms in the interior of a city? If so, mark with contumely Brutus, Marcel, Arnould of Blankenheim, and Coligny. A war of thickets—a street war? Why not? Such was the war of Ambiorix, of Artevelde, of Marnix, and Pelagius. But Ambiorix struggled against Rome, Artevelde against France, Marnix against Spain, and Pelagius against the Moors,—all against the foreigner. Well, monarchy is the foreigner, oppression is the foreigner, divine right is the foreigner, and despotism violates the moral frontier as invasion does the geographical frontier. Expelling the tyrant or expelling the English is, in either case, a reconquest of territory. An hour arrives when a protest is insufficient; after philosophy, action is needed; living strength completes what the idea has sketched out: Prometheus vinctus begins, Aristogiton ends, the Encyclopædia enlightens minds, and August 10 electrifies them. After Æschylus, Thrasybulus; after Diderot, Danton. Multitudes have a tendency to accept the master, and their mass deposits apathy. A crowd is easily led into habits of obedience. These must be stirred up, impelled, and roughly treated by the very blessing of their deliverance, their eyes be hurt by the truth, and light hurled at them in terrible handfuls. They must themselves be to some extent thunderstruck by their own salvation, for such a dazzling awakes them. Hence comes the necessity of tocsins and wars: it is necessary that great combatants should rise, illumine nations by audacity, and shake up that sorry humanity over which divine right, Cæsarian glory, strength, fanaticism, irresponsible power, and absolute majesties cast a shadow,—a mob stupidly occupied in contemplating these gloomy triumphs of the night in their crepuscular splendor. But what? Whom are you talking of? Do you call Louis Philippe the tyrant? No; no more than Louis XVI. These are both what history is accustomed to call good kings; but principles cannot be broken up, the logic of truth is rectilinear, and its peculiarity to be deficient in complaining. No concession therefore; every encroachment on man must be repressed: there is the right divine in Louis XVI., there is the "because a Bourbon" in Louis Philippe; both represent to a certain extent the confiscation of right, and they must be combated in order to sweep away universal usurpation; it must be so, for France is always the one who begins, and when the master falls in France he falls everywhere. In a word, what cause is more just, and consequently what war is greater, than to re-establish social truth, give back its throne to liberty, restore the people to the people and the sovereignty to man, to replace the crown on the head of France, to restore reason and equity in their plenitude, to suppress every germ of antagonism by giving back individuality, to annihilate the obstacle which the royalty offers to the immense human concord, and to place the human race once again on a level with right? Such wars construct peace. An enormous fortalice of prejudice, privileges, superstitions, falsehoods, exactions, abuses, violences, iniquities, and darknesses, is still standing on the earth with its towers of hatred, and it must be thrown down, and the monstrous mass crumble away. To conquer at Austerlitz is great, but to take the Bastille is immense.
No one but will have noticed in himself that the mind—and this is the marvel of its unity complicated with ubiquity—has the strange aptitude of reasoning almost coldly in the most violent extremities, and it often happens that weird passions and deep despair, in the very agony of their blackest soliloquies, handle subjects and discuss theses. Logic is mingled with the convulsion, and the thread of syllogism runs without breaking through the storm of the thoughts: such was Marius's state of mind. While thinking thus, crushed but resolute, and yet hesitating and shuddering at what he was going to do, his eyes wandered about the interior of the barricade. The insurgents were conversing in whispers, without moving, and that almost silence which marks the last phase of expectation was perceptible. Above them, at a third-floor window, Marius distinguished a species of spectator or of witness who seemed singularly attentive; it was the porter killed by Le Cabuc. From below, this head could be vaguely perceived in the reflection of the torch burning on the barricade, and nothing was stranger in this dense and vacillating light than this motionless, livid, and amazed face, with its bristling hair, open and fixed eyes, and gaping mouth, bending over the street in an attitude of curiosity. It might be said that this dead man was contemplating those who were going to die. A long stream of blood, which had flowed from his head, descended from the window to the first-floor, where it stopped.