Page 1421 - les-miserables

patent.
The Revolution of July, which gained but little acceptance
outside of France by kings, had been diversely interpreted
in France, as we have said.
God delivers over to men his visible will in events, an ob-
scure text written in a mysterious tongue. Men immediately
make translations of it; translations hasty, incorrect, full of
errors, of gaps, and of nonsense. Very few minds compre-
hend the divine language. The most sagacious, the calmest,
the most profound, decipher slowly, and when they arrive
with their text, the task has long been completed; there are
already twenty translations on the public place. From each
remaining springs a party, and from each misinterpretation
a faction; and each party thinks that it alone has the true
text, and each faction thinks that it possesses the light.
Power itself is often a faction.
There are, in revolutions, swimmers who go against the
current; they are the old parties.
For the old parties who clung to heredity by the grace of
God, think that revolutions, having sprung from the right
to revolt, one has the right to revolt against them. Error. For
in these revolutions, the one who revolts is not the people;
it is the king. Revolution is precisely the contrary of revolt.
Every revolution, being a normal outcome, contains with-
in itself its legitimacy, which false revolutionists sometimes
dishonor, but which remains even when soiled, which sur-
vives even when stained with blood.
Revolutions spring not from an accident, but from ne-
cessity. A revolution is a return from the fictitious to the

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