Page 1060 - les-miserables

The masters were embalmed, the servants were stuffed with
straw.
A worthy old marquise, an emigree and ruined, who had
but a solitary maid, continued to say: ‘My people.’
What did they do in Madame de T.’s salon? They were
ultra.
To be ultra; this word, although what it represents may
not have disappeared, has no longer any meaning at the
present day. Let us explain it.
To be ultra is to go beyond. It is to attack the sceptre in
the name of the throne, and the mitre in the name of the
attar; it is to ill-treat the thing which one is dragging, it is
to kick over the traces; it is to cavil at the fagot on the score
of the amount of cooking received by heretics; it is to re-
proach the idol with its small amount of idolatry; it is to
insult through excess of respect; it is to discover that the
Pope is not sufficiently papish, that the King is not suffi-
ciently royal, and that the night has too much light; it is to
be discontented with alabaster, with snow, with the swan
and the lily in the name of whiteness; it is to be a partisan
of things to the point of becoming their enemy; it is to be so
strongly for, as to be against.
The ultra spirit especially characterizes the first phase of
the Restoration.
Nothing in history resembles that quarter of an hour
which begins in 1814 and terminates about 1820, with the
advent of M. de Villele, the practical man of the Right.
These six years were an extraordinary moment; at one and
the same time brilliant and gloomy, smiling and sombre, il-

1060 Les Miserables