Page 2076 - les-miserables

In those days, so different from those in which we live,
when the hour was come, when the people wished to put an
end to a situation, which had lasted too long, with a charter
granted or with a legal country, when universal wrath was
diffused in the atmosphere, when the city consented to the
tearing up of the pavements, when insurrection made the
bourgeoisie smile by whispering its password in its ear, then
the inhabitant, thoroughly penetrated with the revolt, so to
speak, was the auxiliary of the combatant, and the house
fraternized with the improvised fortress which rested on
it. When the situation was not ripe, when the insurrection
was not decidedly admitted, when the masses disowned the
movement, all was over with the combatants, the city was
changed into a desert around the revolt, souls grew chilled,
refuges were nailed up, and the street turned into a defile to
help the army to take the barricade.
A people cannot be forced, through surprise, to walk
more quickly than it chooses. Woe to whomsoever tries to
force its hand! A people does not let itself go at random.
Then it abandons the insurrection to itself. The insurgents
become noxious, infected with the plague. A house is an
escarpment, a door is a refusal, a facade is a wall. This wall
hears, sees and will not. It might open and save you. No.
This wall is a judge. It gazes at you and condemns you. What
dismal things are closed houses. They seem dead, they are
living. Life which is, as it were, suspended there, persists
there. No one has gone out of them for four and twenty
hours, but no one is missing from them. In the interior of
that rock, people go and come, go to bed and rise again;

2076 Les Miserables