"Not so sadly as I feel. I have listened with attention to the recapitulation of the political events of the past ten years in France; and most plainly, and as sadly as plainly, does the result prove that every movement in our cause has been as premature as it has been unsuccessful."
"May we not gather wisdom, which shall conduct us to success in the future, from the very errors and disasters of the past?" remarked Flocon.
"Alas!" despondingly replied Marrast, "what is there in our present to promise a bright future more than was in our past to promise us a bright present? Our great leaders of another generation have all left us, one after another—all have dropped into their graves. The cold marble has closed over their venerable brows, and they rest well. Yet they died and made no sign of hope. On us, young, inexperienced and rash, has devolved their task; but the mantle of their power and virtue has not, alas! descended with that task to aid in its momentous accomplishment. General Lamarque's sun went down in clouds. Midnight, deeper than Egyptian darkness, brooded over the delirious deathbed of Lafayette. Armand Carrel fell without hope; and are we wiser than they? How often, oh! how often have I listened to the words of wisdom that fell from those eloquent lips, even as a boy reverently listens to a parent—for such was Armand Carrel to me. Upon this very spot have I stood, in that very chair has he sat, that chair, which, with mingled shame and pride, I reflect is now filled by me—shame, that it is filled in a manner so unworthy of him—pride, that I should have been deemed fit, after him to fill it at all—in that very chair, I say, has his noble form reclined, when he for hours, even from night till the next day's dawn, dwelt with sorrowful eloquence upon his country's present, and looked forward with gloomy foreboding and prediction for the future. It almost seems to me that this mighty shade is with us now!"
"And why was all this despondency, my dear Armand?" remarked Louis Blanc, mildly. "Was it not because our noble and gifted friend was essentially a soldier, not a civilian, not a statesman, not a revolutionist? Had Armand Carrel gone to Algeria, he would have died—if died he had not in an unknown duel, with an unknown bravo—he would have died a Marshal of France—a Bugeaud, a Chaugarnier, a Bedeau, a Cavaignac, a Clausel, a Lamoricière. Carrel had no faith in the masses to achieve a revolution. He never believed that they could even withstand a single charge of regular troops, much less repel and overcome it."
"Not even with barricades?" asked Rollin.
"Not even in defence of barricades," continued Louis Blanc.
"Regular troops have much to learn," added Rollin, with a significant smile. "They will see the day—aye! and we all shall see it and rejoice at its coming, despite all melancholy prognostications, when the people of Paris will dictate abdication to the king of the barricades, from the top of the barricades, the people's throne! Nor will that event tarry long!"
"I doubt it not, I doubt it not, Ledru!" exclaimed Louis Blanc, rejoiced that one of the youngest and least stable of their number appeared free from the apprehensions of one of the most influential and seemingly most reliable. "I accept the omen indicated by your enthusiasm. But I accounted for the vacillation and distrust of our lamented friend, Armand Carrel, by reverting to the fact that he relied entirely on regular troops, military skill, scientific tactics and severe subordination. Now, all of these belonged to our oppressors and none of them to us; and, inasmuch as he could not perceive that enthusiasm, passion for freedom, love of country and family, and the very wrath and rage of desperation itself sometimes not only supply the place of discipline, arms and the knowledge requisite to use them, but even enable vast masses to break down and crush beneath their heel the serried ranks of veteran troops, he could only despair at the prospects apparently before him. Besides, Armand Carrel, like all military men, was a man of action, not reflection—of execution, not contrivance—a soldier, not a conspirator. At the head of ten thousand veteran troops, he would have charged on thrice their number without discipline, with the confident assurance of sweeping them from his path as the chaff of the threshing floor is swept before the blast; but, with an undisciplined mob, as he contemptuously called the masses, he would have moved not a step. The larger the multitude, the less effective and the more impossible to manage he would have deemed it. A revolution accomplished by means of the three arms of the military service—artillery, cavalry and infantry—horse, foot and dragoons, he could readily conceive; but a revolution conducted to a successful issue only by means of pikes, axes, muskets and barricades, never, to the hour of his death, despite the victory of the Three Days, could Carrel comprehend."
"Besides," said Flocon, "it must not be forgotten that Armand Carrel, though a most devoted friend to Republicanism, was never a member of the Société des Droits de l'Homme—was never, as we all now are—a Communist, a Socialist, a Fourierist, a friend to the laborer. No wonder he hoped so little for the people, and trusted to accomplish so little through them."
"There can be no doubt that the social principle which Republicanism is now unconsciously assuming all over France," mildly remarked Louis Blanc, "is lending to the cause incalculable strength. How terribly impressed with a conviction of the justice of the cause in which they perished must have been the unhappy insurgents of Lyons, when, with this motto on their banner: 'To live toiling or die fighting,' they marched firmly up to the cannon's mouth and fought, and, thus fighting, fell. Yet this conviction is not peculiar to the workmen of Lyons. It pervades all Paris, all France, and needs only to be roused to act with an energy which no human power can resist. Social Republican will be the type of the next revolution in France—it must be. The French people have been dazzled by the mirage of liberty ever since '89,—but it has been only a mirage. On the last three days of July, '30, the people of Paris drove out one Bourbon to enthrone another. True, 'The State is myself,' was not the despotic motto he assumed, as did one of his successors, but it was 'Me and my family,' which has proved equally selfish, if not so absolute, and far more dangerous to freedom. With Lafayette and Benjamin Constant, the Citizen King they had made, quarreled as soon as on his throne, and Lafitte and Dupont de l'Eure, his supporters, were banished from the Court. Casimir Perier was called to crush the Liberals. Armand Carrel assailed the act, and urged a republic. 'Le National' was prosecuted, and insurrections followed. Thus was the Revolution of the Three Days won by the people to be seized and enjoyed by the Bourgeoisie. The next revolution will be won by the people, too, but the people will enjoy it!"