"Ne vous laissez pas tromper par de vaines paroles. Plusieurs chercheront à vous persuader que vous êtes vraiment libres, parce qu'ils auront écrit sur une feuille de papier le mot de liberté, et l'auront affiché à tous les carrefours.
La liberté n'est pas un placard qu'on lit au coin de la rue. Elle est une puissance vivante qu'on sent en soi et autour de soi, le génie protecteur du foyer domestique, la garantie des droits sociaux, et le premier de ces droits.
L'oppresseur qui se couvre de son nom est le pire des oppresseurs. Il joint le mensonge à la tyrannie, et à l'injustice la profanation; car le nom de la liberté est saint.
Gardez-vous de ceux qui disent: Liberté, Liberté, et qui la détruisent par leurs œuvres."
"Le laboureur porte le poids du jour, s'expose à la pluie, au soleil, aux vents, pour préparer par son travail la moisson qui remplira ses greniers à l'automne.
La justice est la moisson des peuples.
L'artisan se lève avant l'aube, allume sa petite lampe, et fatigue sans relâche pour gagner un peu de pain qui le nourrisse, lui et ses enfants.
La justice est le pain des peuples.
Le marchand ne refuse aucun labeur, ne se plaint d'aucunes peines; il use son corps et oublie le sommeil, afin d'amasser des richesses.
La liberté est la richesse des peuples.
Le matelot traverse les mers, se livre aux flots et aux tempêtes, se hasarde entre les écueils, souffre le froid et le chaud, afin de s'assurer quelque repos dans ses vieux ans.
La liberté est le repos des peuples.
Le soldat se soumet aux plus dures privations, il veille et combat, et donne son sang, pour ce qu'il appelle la gloire.
La liberté est la gloire des peuples.
S'il est un peuple qui estime moins la justice et la liberté que le laboureur sa moisson, l'artisan un peu de pain, le marchand les richesses, le matelot le repos et le soldat la gloire; élevez autour de ce peuple une haute muraille, afin que son haleine n'infecte pas le reste de la terre."
"Jeune soldat, où vas-tu?
Je vais combattre pour la justice, pour la sainte cause des peuples, pour les droits sacrés du genre humain.
Que tes armes soient bénies, jeune soldat!
Jeune soldat, où vas-tu?
Je vais combattre contre les hommes iniques pour ceux qu'ils renversent et foulent aux pieds, contre les maîtres pour les esclaves, contre les tyrans pour la liberté.
Que tes armes soient bénies, jeune soldat!
Jeune soldat, où vas-tu?
Je vais combattre pour renverser les barrières qui séparent les peuples, et les empêchent de s'embrasser comme les fils du même père, destinés à vivre unis dans un même amour.
Que tes armes soient bénies, jeune soldat!
Jeune soldat, où vas-tu!
Je vais combattre pour affranchir de la tyrannie de l'homme la pensée, la parole, la conscience.
Que tes armes soient bénies, sept fois bénies, jeune soldat!"
Idealistic and monotonous as these utterances and refrains are, they possess the kind of eloquence which makes a powerful impression upon the common people.
Lamennais' outbursts of revolutionary sentiment come very near to being pure poetry. Hugo's are pure poetry. In reading his verses written in the Forties we feel how his poet's ear hears the dull underground rumbling of the approaching Revolution, and how he foresees that its crater will open in Paris. As far back as in the preface to the Feuilles d'Automne he reproaches England with having turned Ireland into a graveyard, the sovereigns of Europe with having made Italy a prison for galley-slaves, the Czar with having populated Siberia with Poles. In it, too, he already writes of the old religions which are sloughing their skins, and (alluding to Saint-Simonism) of the new, which are stammeringly enunciating their half-reasonable, half-false principles. And from this time onward he is in all his works the champion of the liberty of the people, of their right to self-government, and of the religion of humanity. As a dramatist he began by rebelling merely against the accepted laws of style; but ere long he was, like Voltaire a century earlier, making the drama the organ of his ideas. One of his plays (Le Roi s'amuse) is an attack upon absolute monarchy as represented by Francis I, the most brutal of the royal debauchees of France. Another (Angelo), the preface to which is an affirmation of genuine Saint-Simonistic principles, contrasts woman within the pale of society with her sister beyond it, endows the strolling actress with virtues which the great lady lacks, and gives each of them her own ideality. A third (Ruy Blas) symbolises the elevation of the lowest class to supreme power. In Molière's Les Précieuses the lackey was treated like some animal which, however clever it might be, was liable to be thrashed, even when it had only carried out its master's orders; shortly before the great Revolution Scapin is transformed into Figaro, who, though still in livery, openly manages his masters; in Ruy Blas the servant, that is to say, the born plebeian, throws off his livery, assumes authority, and rules. While fully conscious of the great improbabilities and weaknesses of these dramas, we are also sensible of the atmosphere of new ideas which pervades them.
Hugo's was so dogmatic a mind that each new world of ideas which he entered in the course of his life crystallised itself, for him, into a code of doctrines. From the moment he became a democrat he was the opponent of capital punishment. He protested against it as an author in Le dernier Jour d'un Condamné, and also in Claude Gueux, where a very unpleasant real incident is turned topsy-turvy, and an execrable bandit is transformed into a hero and victim; he protested against it as a private individual; he made personal appeals for the remittance of sentences of death, both to French kings and foreign juries. Though opinion is still, and with good reason, divided as to the advisability of abolishing capital punishment for murder, Hugo's endeavours to save the lives of political offenders have a claim to our undivided sympathy. In 1839 he interceded in behalf of the noble revolutionary, Armand Barbès; Louis Philippe had, however, in this case remitted the sentence of death before Hugo's verses reached him.
But the most beautiful and the only perfectly accurate expression of the mental attitude of France's greatest lyric poet is, naturally, to be found in his poetry. The dramas of his first period, the novels of his second (which do not fall within the scope of this volume), are of small significance in comparison with the poems of the Thirties and Forties, which are contained in the two volumes entitled Les Contemplations. In these his faith in progress, his political convictions, his social hopes, his religious feelings, are expressed in the only artistic form which suits them. It is a form which cannot be dissolved, a style which cannot be paraphrased; it must be enjoyed in the original.
Hugo had every right to exclaim, as he did in one of the poems of this collection:
"J'ai, dans le livre, avec le drame, en prose, en vers.
Plaidé pour les petits et les misérables;
Suppliant les heureux et les inexorables;
J'ai réhabilité le bouffon, l'histrion,
Tous les damnés humains, Triboulet, Marion,
Le laquais, le forçat et la prostituée;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
J'ai réclamé des droits pour la femme et l'enfant;
J'ai tâché d'éclairer l'homme en le réchauffant;
J'allais criant: Science! Écriture! Parole!
Je voulais résorber le bagne par l'école."
But, he complains:
"Le passé ne veut pas s'en aller. Il revient
Sans cesse sur ses pas, reveut, reprend, retient.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
L'immense renégat d'Hier, marquis, se nomme
Demain; mai tourne bride et plante là l'hiver;
Use à tout ressaisir ses ongles noirs; fait rage;
Il gonfle son vieux flot, souffle son vieil orage,
Vomit sa vieille nuit, crie: À bas! crie: À mort!
Pleure, tonne, tempête, éclate, hurle, mord."
But the onward movement would not be checked. The cleansing thunderstorm of 1848 broke over Europe. It came, that year of earthquakes, that year of emancipation, of heroic struggles, and, alas! of romantic childishness—when the helm of France was in the hands, not of statesmen, but of poets and enthusiasts; when Saint-Simonistic, neo-Christian, and poetical, instead of practical political ideas prevailed in the councils of the State. How eloquent is such a little fact as this, that one of the first proceedings of the Provisional Government was (at Lamartine's suggestion) to declare negro-slavery abolished! The ideas of Romantic France find their realisation in the Revolution of 1848.