Page 1405 - les-miserables

acts committed, but by reason of ideas accepted. It should
be composed of past and be historic; be composed of future
and be sympathetic.
All this explains why the early revolutions contented
themselves with finding a man, Cromwell or Napoleon; and
why the second absolutely insisted on finding a family, the
House of Brunswick or the House of Orleans.
Royal houses resemble those Indian fig-trees, each branch
of which, bending over to the earth, takes root and becomes
a fig-tree itself. Each branch may become a dynasty. On the
sole condition that it shall bend down to the people.
Such is the theory of the skilful.
Here, then, lies the great art: to make a little render to
success the sound of a catastrophe in order that those who
profit by it may tremble from it also, to season with fear ev-
ery step that is taken, to augment the curve of the transition
to the point of retarding progress, to dull that aurora, to
denounce and retrench the harshness of enthusiasm, to cut
all angles and nails, to wad triumph, to muffle up right, to
envelop the giant-people in flannel, and to put it to bed very
speedily, to impose a diet on that excess of health, to put
Hercules on the treatment of a convalescent, to dilute the
event with the expedient, to offer to spirits thirsting for the
ideal that nectar thinned out with a potion, to take one’s
precautions against too much success, to garnish the revo-
lution with a shade.
1830 practised this theory, already applied to England by
1688.
1830 is a revolution arrested midway. Half of progress,

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