Les Misérables, v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic

Les Misérables, v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic

1831 and 1832, the two years immediately attached to the revolution of July, contain the most peculiar and striking moments of history; and these two years, amid those that precede and follow them, stand out like mountains. They possess the true revolutionary grandeur, and precipices may be traced in them. The social masses, the foundations of civilization, the solid group of superimposed and adherent interests, and the secular profiles of the ancient Gallic formations, appear and disappear every moment through the stormy clouds of systems, passions, and theories. These apparitions and disappearances were called resistance and movement, but at intervals truth, the daylight of the human soul, flashes through all. This remarkable epoch is so circumscribed, and is beginning to become so remote from us, that we are able to seize its principal outlines. We will make the attempt. The Restoration was one of those intermediate phases which are so difficult to define, in which are fatigue, buzzing, murmurs, sleep, and tumult, and which, after all, are nought but the arrival of a great nation at a halting-place. These epochs are peculiar, and deceive the politician who tries to take advantage of them. At the outset the nation only demands repose; there is but one thirst, for peace, and only one ambition, to be small,which is the translation of keeping quiet. "Great events, great accidents, great adventures, great men,O Lord! we have had enough of these, and more than enough." Csar would be given for Prusias, and Napoleon for the Roi d'Yvett, who was "such a merry little king." Folk have been marching since daybreak and arrive at the evening of a long and rough journey; they made their first halt with Mirabeau, the second with Robespierre, and the third with Napoleon, and they are exhausted. Everybody insists on a bed. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 48734
Author: Hugo, Victor
Release Date: Apr 18, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Wraxall, Lascelles, Sir, 1828-1865