Les Misérables, page 95
CHAPTER XVIII--A RECRUDESCENCE OF DIVINE RIGHT
End of the dictatorship. A whole European system crumbled away.
The Empire sank into a gloom which resembled that of the Roman world asit expired. Again we behold the abyss, as in the days of the barbarians;only the barbarism of 1815, which must be called by its pet name of thecounter-revolution, was not long breathed, soon fell to panting, andhalted short. The Empire was bewept,--let us acknowledge the fact,--andbewept by heroic eyes. If glory lies in the sword converted into asceptre, the Empire had been glory in person. It had diffused over theearth all the light which tyranny can give a sombre light. We will saymore; an obscure light. Compared to the true daylight, it is night. Thisdisappearance of night produces the effect of an eclipse.
Louis XVIII. re-entered Paris. The circling dances of the 8th of Julyeffaced the enthusiasms of the 20th of March. The Corsican became theantithesis of the Bearnese. The flag on the dome of the Tuileries waswhite. The exile reigned. Hartwell's pine table took its place in frontof the fleur-de-lys-strewn throne of Louis XIV. Bouvines and Fontenoywere mentioned as though they had taken place on the precedingday, Austerlitz having become antiquated. The altar and the thronefraternized majestically. One of the most undisputed forms of the healthof society in the nineteenth century was established over France, andover the continent. Europe adopted the white cockade. Trestaillon wascelebrated. The device _non pluribus impar_ re-appeared on the stonerays representing a sun upon the front of the barracks on the Quaid'Orsay. Where there had been an Imperial Guard, there was now a redhouse. The Arc du Carrousel, all laden with badly borne victories,thrown out of its element among these novelties, a little ashamed, itmay be, of Marengo and Arcola, extricated itself from its predicamentwith the statue of the Duc d'Angoulême. The cemetery of the Madeleine,a terrible pauper's grave in 1793, was covered with jasper and marble,since the bones of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette lay in that dust.
In the moat of Vincennes a sepulchral shaft sprang from the earth,recalling the fact that the Duc d'Enghien had perished in the verymonth when Napoleon was crowned. Pope Pius VII., who had performed thecoronation very near this death, tranquilly bestowed his blessing on thefall as he had bestowed it on the elevation. At Schoenbrunn there wasa little shadow, aged four, whom it was seditious to call the King ofRome. And these things took place, and the kings resumed their thrones,and the master of Europe was put in a cage, and the old regime becamethe new regime, and all the shadows and all the light of the earthchanged place, because, on the afternoon of a certain summer's day, ashepherd said to a Prussian in the forest, "Go this way, and not that!"
This 1815 was a sort of lugubrious April. Ancient unhealthy andpoisonous realities were covered with new appearances. A lie wedded1789; the right divine was masked under a charter; fictions becameconstitutional; prejudices, superstitions and mental reservations, withArticle 14 in the heart, were varnished over with liberalism. It was theserpent's change of skin.
Man had been rendered both greater and smaller by Napoleon. Under thisreign of splendid matter, the ideal had received the strange name ofideology! It is a grave imprudence in a great man to turn the futureinto derision. The populace, however, that food for cannon which is sofond of the cannoneer, sought him with its glance. Where is he? What ishe doing? "Napoleon is dead," said a passer-by to a veteran of Marengoand Waterloo. "He dead!" cried the soldier; "you don't know him."Imagination distrusted this man, even when overthrown. The depths ofEurope were full of darkness after Waterloo. Something enormous remainedlong empty through Napoleon's disappearance.
The kings placed themselves in this void. Ancient Europe profited byit to undertake reforms. There was a Holy Alliance; _Belle-Alliance_,Beautiful Alliance, the fatal field of Waterloo had said in advance.
In presence and in face of that antique Europe reconstructed, thefeatures of a new France were sketched out. The future, which theEmperor had rallied, made its entry. On its brow it bore the star,Liberty. The glowing eyes of all young generations were turned on it.Singular fact! people were, at one and the same time, in love withthe future, Liberty, and the past, Napoleon. Defeat had rendered thevanquished greater. Bonaparte fallen seemed more lofty than Napoleonerect. Those who had triumphed were alarmed. England had him guarded byHudson Lowe, and France had him watched by Montchenu. His folded armsbecame a source of uneasiness to thrones. Alexander called him "mysleeplessness." This terror was the result of the quantity ofrevolution which was contained in him. That is what explains and excusesBonapartist liberalism. This phantom caused the old world to tremble.The kings reigned, but ill at their ease, with the rock of Saint Helenaon the horizon.
While Napoleon was passing through the death struggle at Longwood, thesixty thousand men who had fallen on the field of Waterloo were quietlyrotting, and something of their peace was shed abroad over the world.The Congress of Vienna made the treaties in 1815, and Europe called thisthe Restoration.
This is what Waterloo was.
But what matters it to the Infinite? all that tempest, all that cloud,that war, then that peace? All that darkness did not trouble for amoment the light of that immense Eye before which a grub skipping fromone blade of grass to another equals the eagle soaring from belfry tobelfry on the towers of Notre Dame.
