Page 1417 - les-miserables

witness to whom we have recently referred: ‘I won seven last
night.’ During the early years of his reign, the death pen-
alty was as good as abolished, and the erection of a scaffold
was a violence committed against the King. The Greve hav-
ing disappeared with the elder branch, a bourgeois place
of execution was instituted under the name of the Barri-
ere-Saint-Jacques; ‘practical men’ felt the necessity of a
quasi-legitimate guillotine; and this was one of the victories
of Casimir Perier, who represented the narrow sides of the
bourgeoisie, over Louis Philippe, who represented its lib-
eral sides. Louis Philippe annotated Beccaria with his own
hand. After the Fieschi machine, he exclaimed: ‘What a pity
that I was not wounded! Then I might have pardoned!’ On
another occasion, alluding to the resistance offered by his
ministry, he wrote in connection with a political criminal,
who is one of the most generous figures of our day: ‘His par-
don is granted; it only remains for me to obtain it.’ Louis
Philippe was as gentle as Louis IX. and as kindly as Henri
IV.
Now, to our mind, in history, where kindness is the rar-
est of pearls, the man who is kindly almost takes precedence
of the man who is great.
Louis Philippe having been severely judged by some,
harshly, perhaps, by others, it is quite natural that a man,
himself a phantom at the present day, who knew that king,
should come and testify in his favor before history; this de-
position, whatever else it may be, is evidently and above all
things, entirely disinterested; an epitaph penned by a dead
man is sincere; one shade may console another shade; the

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