Page 2077 - les-miserables

they are a family party there; there they eat and drink; they
are afraid, a terrible thing! Fear excuses this fearful lack of
hospitality; terror is mixed with it, an extenuating circum-
stance. Sometimes, even, and this has been actually seen,
fear turns to passion; fright may change into fury, as pru-
dence does into rage; hence this wise saying: ‘The enraged
moderates.’ There are outbursts of supreme terror, whence
springs wrath like a mournful smoke.—‘What do these peo-
ple want? What have they come there to do? Let them get
out of the scrape. So much the worse for them. It is their
fault. They are only getting what they deserve. It does not
concern us. Here is our poor street all riddled with balls.
They are a pack of rascals. Above all things, don’t open the
door.’—And the house assumes the air of a tomb. The insur-
gent is in the death-throes in front of that house; he sees the
grape-shot and naked swords drawing near; if he cries, he
knows that they are listening to him, and that no one will
come; there stand walls which might protect him, there are
men who might save him; and these walls have ears of flesh,
and these men have bowels of stone.
Whom shall he reproach?
No one and every one.
The incomplete times in which we live.
It is always at its own risk and peril that Utopia is convert-
ed into revolution, and from philosophical protest becomes
an armed protest, and from Minerva turns to Pallas.
The Utopia which grows impatient and becomes revolt
knows what awaits it; it almost always comes too soon. Then
it becomes resigned, and stoically accepts catastrophe in

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