Page 1080 - les-miserables

Talma,—the poisoner of Jaffa,—the tiger,—Buonaparte,—
all this vanished, and gave place in his mind to a vague and
brilliant radiance in which shone, at an inaccessible height,
the pale marble phantom of Caesar. The Emperor had been
for his father only the well-beloved captain whom one ad-
mires, for whom one sacrifices one’s self; he was something
more to Marius. He was the predestined constructor of the
French group, succeeding the Roman group in the domi-
nation of the universe. He was a prodigious architect, of a
destruction, the continuer of Charlemagne, of Louis XI., of
Henry IV., of Richelieu, of Louis XIV., and of the Commit-
tee of Public Safety, having his spots, no doubt, his faults,
his crimes even, being a man, that is to say; but august in his
faults, brilliant in his spots, powerful in his crime.
He was the predestined man, who had forced all nations
to say: ‘The great nation!’ He was better than that, he was
the very incarnation of France, conquering Europe by the
sword which he grasped, and the world by the light which he
shed. Marius saw in Bonaparte the dazzling spectre which
will always rise upon the frontier, and which will guard the
future. Despot but dictator; a despot resulting from a re-
public and summing up a revolution. Napoleon became for
him the man-people as Jesus Christ is the man-God.
It will be perceived, that like all new converts to a re-
ligion, his conversion intoxicated him, he hurled himself
headlong into adhesion and he went too far. His nature was
so constructed; once on the downward slope, it was almost
impossible for him to put on the drag. Fanaticism for the
sword took possession of him, and complicated in his mind

1080 Les Miserables