Page 1423 - les-miserables

After having been towed, it undertook to tow.
Meanwhile, within her, pauperism, the proletariat, sal-
ary, education, penal servitude, prostitution, the fate of the
woman, wealth, misery, production, consumption, division,
exchange, coin, credit, the rights of capital, the rights of la-
bor,— all these questions were multiplied above society, a
terrible slope.
Outside of political parties properly so called, another
movement became manifest. Philosophical fermentation re-
plied to democratic fermentation. The elect felt troubled as
well as the masses; in another manner, but quite as much.
Thinkers meditated, while the soil, that is to say, the
people, traversed by revolutionary currents, trembled un-
der them with indescribably vague epileptic shocks. These
dreamers, some isolated, others united in families and al-
most in communion, turned over social questions in a
pacific but profound manner; impassive miners, who tran-
quilly pushed their galleries into the depths of a volcano,
hardly disturbed by the dull commotion and the furnaces
of which they caught glimpses.
This tranquillity was not the least beautiful spectacle of
this agitated epoch.
These men left to political parties the question of rights,
they occupied themselves with the question of happiness.
The well-being of man, that was what they wanted to ex-
tract from society.
They raised material questions, questions of agriculture,
of industry, of commerce, almost to the dignity of a religion.
In civilization, such as it has formed itself, a little by the

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