Page 1427 - les-miserables

will be worthy to call yourself France.
This is what socialism said outside and above a few sects
which have gone astray; that is what it sought in facts, that
is what it sketched out in minds.
Efforts worthy of admiration! Sacred attempts!
These doctrines, these theories, these resistances, the
unforeseen necessity for the statesman to take philoso-
phers into account, confused evidences of which we catch a
glimpse, a new system of politics to be created, which shall
be in accord with the old world without too much disac-
cord with the new revolutionary ideal, a situation in which
it became necessary to use Lafayette to defend Polignac, the
intuition of progress transparent beneath the revolt, the
chambers and streets, the competitions to be brought into
equilibrium around him, his faith in the Revolution, per-
haps an eventual indefinable resignation born of the vague
acceptance of a superior definitive right, his desire to re-
main of his race, his domestic spirit, his sincere respect for
the people, his own honesty, preoccupied Louis Philippe al-
most painfully, and there were moments when strong and
courageous as he was, he was overwhelmed by the difficul-
ties of being a king.
He felt under his feet a formidable disaggregation, which
was not, nevertheless, a reduction to dust, France being
more France than ever.
Piles of shadows covered the horizon. A strange shade,
gradually drawing nearer, extended little by little over men,
over things, over ideas; a shade which came from wraths
and systems. Everything which had been hastily stifled was

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