“You cannot put out the aristocrat with the breath of a mere shout,” said he calmly. “What does the State know of justice or of equity? There is one law for the strong and one for the weak—and there always will be.”
There was some laughter; and again counter-cheers.
“The State is the triumph of the individual over his fellows, rank by rank, until the poorer spirits labour for the free spirits. Tush! when you have a strike in this so-called Republic, the troops are used for those that are in the right, hein?” He laughed. “I tell you they are drawn up to strike for those that are in power. And they are right. The commonweal demands the public good. I am not for it. I demand rather to play gaily with this life that is mine, as if it were mine, not this one’s, nor another’s—I demand to play it like a gentleman, with dignity, elegantly, artistically, free to serve my own sweet will, lusting when I will, with whom I will, reading pleasant literature when I would rest my body, sleeping when I would, strutting it abroad with my clothes well-fitting, enjoying life, and looking well-dressed for the part—I am aristocrat. As for the people let them be as happy as they may, consistently with toil—let them have bread and amusement on occasion—let them prate of the humanities—but do not rack their grey minds with books. Shut the muddling schools to them. Do not harass their vague minds and make them pale with thinking. We can do all that for them. Let them be industrious and well-behaved. Thought and the riot of living are only for the aristocrat. These things but give the people a gross headache. The peasant has stolen our acres; the burgess has bought our strongholds. And is the world gayer? Is it cleaner in conduct? Is it stronger in men? I say the world is for the aristocrat—and the aristocrat has fallen from the days when, the stag being long in the finding, we hunted a lean peasant instead. The aristocrat being dethroned, the Jew holds all France in his fat and grubbing hands. Is France more splendid than it was? But one thing they have not been able to buy—our countenance. They still have our contempt. And we yet hold the reins of the glorious lordship of war. We still know how to die. And until we die, when we walk abroad let the people see to it that they give us the cleanest place if we condescend to walk the same pavement.... But the dirty rogues encroach. The dirty rabble ape our very vices. The people to-day have even the impertinence to be bored—boredom is the privilege of the aristocrat. They would leave us nothing.”
Amidst the laughter and the applause that rose above the swell of the ugly growl which was the sullen voice of the great crowd before him, he descended from the platform.
A restless silence fell upon the place.
But the massed crowd burst into a roar as a man leaped on to the platform and stepped forward before the people—a rough workman, energetic, vigorous, alert, dirty. This was one of those half-educated men of action, bred by the academic unrest of the literary anarchists—bred by the egoists, Nietzsche and other dainty-fingered gentlemanly persons enough, who would have been alarmed to think that their theories were breeding such volcanoes. Into his blood had eaten their academic trifling with extreme individualism—his fanatic eyes glowed at the very thought of his fingers about the throat of the rich—and, innately criminal by every instinct, his nerves leaped at the murderous impulse when he found logic was with him in his histrionic dreams of killing.
The picture-loving eyes of the world are caught by the theatric glamour of the unflinching courage that sent out the debonnair and scented gentlemen of Versailles, beribboned and careless, to face, with clouded canes for sole weapon, the blood-dripping and weaponed mob of the Revolution—the romantic pulse of the grey world is thrilled at the grim tale of the exquisites who continued their games of cards and dice, regardless of the interruption of rude history and with all the elaborate etiquette and fantastic ceremony of their accustomed habit, until the command came from rough lips that it was the turn of each to step into the jolting tumbrils that lumbered to the scaffold and the guillotine. And indeed theirs was a splendid feminine defensive courage, that dreaded only the indecencies. But courage is not the privilege of a class—the sombre garb of the workman holds often enough habitual acts of courage, persistent and grim as that which on occasion sets the poets rhyming if it be shown by a prince of the blood; and it covers thereby a more virile danger, if roused to it, of turning aggressive hands to the rectifying of its grievances, injustices, and years of sullenly borne insolences. And if the rousing be done by a master wit, what vast significance may be there? or what ghastly catastrophe?
This fellow swung back his head to speak—and a shout greeted him from the back of the great hall, where some ugly-looking fellows stood:
“Gavroche!” cried they—“silence for Gavroche!”
The greeting touched the man’s conceit, and he smiled. He laughed: