Page 1989 - les-miserables
P. 1989
No one ever has known the name of the man who spoke
thus; he was some unknown blouse-wearer, a stranger, a
man forgotten, a passing hero, that great anonymous, al-
ways mingled in human crises and in social geneses who,
at a given moment, utters in a supreme fashion the decisive
word, and who vanishes into the shadows after having rep-
resented for a minute, in a lightning flash, the people and
God.
This inexorable resolution so thoroughly impregnat-
ed the air of the 6th of June, 1832, that, almost at the very
same hour, on the barricade Saint-Merry, the insurgents
were raising that clamor which has become a matter of his-
tory and which has been consigned to the documents in
the case:—‘What matters it whether they come to our as-
sistance or not? Let us get ourselves killed here, to the very
last man.’
As the reader sees, the two barricades, though materially
isolated, were in communication with each other.
1989
