In no one of Halévy’s stories do we see so clearly the application of his robust, sincere literary creed as confessed in his own words:
“We must not write simply for the refined, the blasé, and the squeamish. We must write for that man who goes there on the street with his nose in his newspaper and his umbrella under his arm. We must write for that fat, breathless woman whom I see from my window, as she climbs painfully into the Odéon omnibus. We must write courageously for the bourgeois, if it were only to try to refine them, to make them less bourgeois. And if I dared, I should say that we must write even for fools.”
THE INSURGENT
(L’INSURGÉ)
By Ludovic Halévy
Done into English by the Editor
“Prisoner,” said the president of the court-martial, “have you anything to add in your defense?”
“Yes, my colonel,” responded the accused; “you have given me a little advocate who has defended me according to his idea. I want to defend myself according to my own.
“My name is Martin—Louis Joseph; I am fifty-five years old. My father was a locksmith. He had a little shop in the upper part of the Faubourg Saint-Martin and did a small business. We just about lived. I learned to read in Le National, which was, I believe, the paper of Monsieur Thiers.
“The 27th of July, 1830, my father went out early in the morning. That evening at ten o’clock they brought him back to us dying on a litter. He had received a bullet in the chest. By his side upon the litter was his musket.