Part 241 (1/2)
And as he ran:--
”Ah, by the way, where was I?” said he.
And he resumed his ditty, as he plunged rapidly through the streets, and this is what died away in the gloom:--
”Mais il reste encore des bastilles, Et je vais mettre le hola Dans l'orde public que voila.
Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.
”Quelqu'un veut-il jouer aux quilles?
Tout l'ancien monde s'ecroula Quand la grosse boule roula.
Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.
”Vieux bon peuple, a coups de bequilles, Ca.s.sons ce Louvre ou s'etala La monarchie en falbala.
Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.
”Nous en avons force les grilles, Le roi Charles-Dix ce jour la, Tenait mal et se decolla.
Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.”[57]
The post's recourse to arms was not without result. The cart was conquered, the drunken man was taken prisoner. The first was put in the pound, the second was later on somewhat hara.s.sed before the councils of war as an accomplice. The public ministry of the day proved its indefatigable zeal in the defence of society, in this instance.
Gavroche's adventure, which has lingered as a tradition in the quarters of the Temple, is one of the most terrible souvenirs of the elderly bourgeois of the Marais, and is ent.i.tled in their memories: ”The nocturnal attack by the post of the Royal Printing Establishment.”
[THE END OF VOLUME IV. ”SAINT DENIS”]
VOLUME V--JEAN VALJEAN
[Ill.u.s.tration: Frontispiece Volume Five ]
[Ill.u.s.tration: t.i.tlepage Volume Five ]
BOOK FIRST.--THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS
CHAPTER I--THE CHARYBDIS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT ANTOINE AND THE SCYLLA OF THE FAUBOURG DU TEMPLE
The two most memorable barricades which the observer of social maladies can name do not belong to the period in which the action of this work is laid. These two barricades, both of them symbols, under two different aspects, of a redoubtable situation, sprang from the earth at the time of the fatal insurrection of June, 1848, the greatest war of the streets that history has ever beheld.
It sometimes happens that, even contrary to principles, even contrary to liberty, equality, and fraternity, even contrary to the universal vote, even contrary to the government, by all for all, from the depths of its anguish, of its discouragements and its dest.i.tutions, of its fevers, of its distresses, of its miasmas, of its ignorances, of its darkness, that great and despairing body, the rabble, protests against, and that the populace wages battle against, the people.
Beggars attack the common right; the ochlocracy rises against demos.
These are melancholy days; for there is always a certain amount of night even in this madness, there is suicide in this duel, and those words which are intended to be insults--beggars, canaille, ochlocracy, populace--exhibit, alas! rather the fault of those who reign than the fault of those who suffer; rather the fault of the privileged than the fault of the disinherited.
For our own part, we never p.r.o.nounce those words without pain and without respect, for when philosophy fathoms the facts to which they correspond, it often finds many a grandeur beside these miseries. Athens was an ochlocracy; the beggars were the making of Holland; the populace saved Rome more than once; and the rabble followed Jesus Christ.