Page 1063 - les-miserables

tradition, worship, religion, respect. It is faithful, brave, chi-
valric, loving, devoted. It has mingled, though with regret,
the secular grandeurs of the monarchy with the new gran-
deurs of the nation. Its mistake is not to understand the
Revolution, the Empire, glory, liberty, young ideas, young
generations, the age. But this mistake which it makes with
regard to us,— have we not sometimes been guilty of it to-
wards them? The Revolution, whose heirs we are, ought to
be intelligent on all points. To attack Royalism is a miscon-
struction of liberalism. What an error! And what blindness!
Revolutionary France is wanting in respect towards historic
France, that is to say, towards its mother, that is to say, to-
wards itself. After the 5th of September, the nobility of the
monarchy is treated as the nobility of the Empire was treat-
ed after the 5th of July. They were unjust to the eagle, we are
unjust to the fleur-de-lys. It seems that we must always have
something to proscribe! Does it serve any purpose to ungild
the crown of Louis XIV., to scrape the coat of arms of Henry
IV.? We scoff at M. de Vaublanc for erasing the N’s from the
bridge of Jena! What was it that he did? What are we doing?
Bouvines belongs to us as well as Marengo. The fleurs-de-lys
are ours as well as the N’s. That is our patrimony. To what
purpose shall we diminish it? We must not deny our coun-
try in the past any more than in the present. Why not accept
the whole of history? Why not love the whole of France?’
It is thus that doctrinarians criticised and protected
Royalism, which was displeased at criticism and furious at
protection.
The ultras marked the first epoch of Royalism, congre-

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