Page 1414 - les-miserables

reassuring in governing power, therein lay the fortune of
Louis Philippe in 1830; never was there a more complete
adaptation of a man to an event; the one entered into the
other, and the incarnation took place. Louis Philippe is 1830
made man. Moreover, he had in his favor that great recom-
mendation to the throne, exile. He had been proscribed, a
wanderer, poor. He had lived by his own labor. In Switzer-
land, this heir to the richest princely domains in France had
sold an old horse in order to obtain bread. At Reichenau,
he gave lessons in mathematics, while his sister Adelaide
did wool work and sewed. These souvenirs connected with
a king rendered the bourgeoisie enthusiastic. He had, with
his own hands, demolished the iron cage of Mont-Saint-Mi-
chel, built by Louis XI, and used by Louis XV. He was the
companion of Dumouriez, he was the friend of Lafayette; he
had belonged to the Jacobins’ club; Mirabeau had slapped
him on the shoulder; Danton had said to him: ‘Young man!’
At the age of four and twenty, in ‘93, being then M. de Char-
tres, he had witnessed, from the depth of a box, the trial of
Louis XVI., so well named that poor tyrant. The blind clair-
voyance of the Revolution, breaking royalty in the King and
the King with royalty, did so almost without noticing the
man in the fierce crushing of the idea, the vast storm of the
Assembly-Tribunal, the public wrath interrogating, Capet
not knowing what to reply, the alarming, stupefied vacil-
lation by that royal head beneath that sombre breath, the
relative innocence of all in that catastrophe, of those who
condemned as well as of the man condemned,—he had
looked on those things, he had contemplated that giddiness;

1414 Les Miserables