Page 229 - les-miserables

‘rose-colored’ a light; it is not so much of ‘an amiable rab-
ble’ as it is thought. The Parisian is to the Frenchman what
the Athenian was to the Greek: no one sleeps more soundly
than he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy than he,
no one can better assume the air of forgetfulness; let him
not be trusted nevertheless; he is ready for any sort of cool
deed; but when there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy
of admiration in every sort of fury. Give him a pike, he will
produce the 10th of August; give him a gun, you will have
Austerlitz. He is Napoleon’s stay and Danton’s resource. Is it
a question of country, he enlists; is it a question of liberty, he
tears up the pavements. Beware! his hair filled with wrath, is
epic; his blouse drapes itself like the folds of a chlamys. Take
care! he will make of the first Rue Grenetat which comes to
hand Caudine Forks. When the hour strikes, this man of
the faubourgs will grow in stature; this little man will arise,
and his gaze will be terrible, and his breath will become a
tempest, and there will issue forth from that slender chest
enough wind to disarrange the folds of the Alps. It is, thanks
to the suburban man of Paris, that the Revolution, mixed
with arms, conquers Europe. He sings; it is his delight. Pro-
portion his song to his nature, and you will see! As long as
he has for refrain nothing but la Carmagnole, he only over-
throws Louis XVI.; make him sing the Marseillaise, and he
will free the world.
This note jotted down on the margin of Angles’ report,
we will return to our four couples. The dinner, as we have
said, was drawing to its close.

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