Page 72 - les-miserables

consecration of humanity.’
The Bishop could not refrain from murmuring:—
‘Yes? ‘93!’
The member of the Convention straightened
himself up in his chair with an almost lugubrious solem-
nity, and exclaimed, so far as a dying man is capable of
exclamation:—
‘Ah, there you go; ‘93! I was expecting that word. A cloud
had been forming for the space of fifteen hundred years; at
the end of fifteen hundred years it burst. You are putting the
thunderbolt on its trial.’
The Bishop felt, without, perhaps, confessing it, that some-
thing within him had suffered extinction. Nevertheless, he
put a good face on the matter. He replied:—
‘The judge speaks in the name of justice; the priest speaks
in the name of pity, which is nothing but a more lofty jus-
tice. A thunderbolt should commit no error.’ And he added,
regarding the member of the Convention steadily the while,
‘Louis XVII.?’
The conventionary stretched forth his hand and grasped
the Bishop’s arm.
‘Louis XVII.! let us see. For whom do you mourn? is it
for the innocent child? very good; in that case I mourn with
you. Is it for the royal child? I demand time for reflection.
To me, the brother of Cartouche, an innocent child who was
hung up by the armpits in the Place de Greve, until death
ensued, for the sole crime of having been the brother of Car-
touche, is no less painful than the grandson of Louis XV., an
innocent child, martyred in the tower of the Temple, for the

72 Les Miserables