Eugène Sue

“ People and bourgeoisie are now but one party, united by the same interests, by the same hopes, and both resolved on ending the privileges of our enemies, royalty, the Church, and the nobility. The bourgeoisie has learned that in the struggle it has joined with the monarchy, it has but one support, the people. If it is the head, we are the arms. The Third Estate possesses the shining lights, the wealth; but we, of the seed of the people, we have the numbers, the force, the courage. And then, to accomplish the revolution, our co-operation is absolutely necessary to the bourgeoisie. ”

“ Motion after motion followed hard upon one another, and passed unnoticed amid the tumult.
"Let us die for liberty!" "Outlawry for the dictator!" "Long live the Constitution!" "Long live the Republic!" Such were the cries that rang within the Orangery.
All at once the roll of drums was heard approaching, then the heavy and regular tread of a marching army. The Orangery door was battered down with the butts of muskets. General Leclerc, his sword drawn, entered, followed by grenadiers. At this apparition, a death-like stillness fell as if by enchantment upon the assembly. ”

“ Finally she broke out in an altered voice:
"What, Franz! Shall centuries of oppression not have their day of retribution? Shall the crimes of ages go unpunished? Shall the shades of our martyred fathers not be appeased by vengeance? Shall the example of inexorable justice not be given to the world, in the name of eternal good? What! They would deny us one day, one single day of legitimate reprisals after fifteen centuries of crime? Must the victims be constrained to pardon their executioners?"
"Victoria, those who seek the birth of the reign of fraternity on earth hold blood in abhorrence. ”

“ We must inflame the fear of the bourgeoisie for the populace; we must kindle the mistrust of the laborers toward the bourgeois; we must prick the people on to excess; above all we must invoke to pillage and massacre that furious beast which is not the people, but which in times of revolution is confounded with it—it is the red specter which we must make use of to terrify the bourgeoisie and drive it to sunder its cause from that of the people. That is how we can countermine the revolution, and force the sovereigns of Europe to unite, to invade France, and to exterminate our enemies. ”

“ As it came in sight the people cried with one voice, "Long live the law! Long live the Nation!" Then the storm broke over Paris, and amidst such exclamations, mingled with the crashing of thunder, Louis XVI entered as a prisoner the palace of his fathers.
Such was the blindness of the Assembly in its bourgeois egotism, in its mistrust of the people, in its absurd hatred of republican government, that it still thought to impose upon France the authority of this King, disgraced, despised even by his own partisans, and convicted of perjury, treason, and conspiracy with the foreigner. ”

“ The bourgeoisie, the nobility, the clergy—all abominate the Republic. So much is settled. Let us, then, first attend to the overthrow of the Republic; later we may decide on its successor. Let us decide immediately whether we shall or shall not delay the execution of our plot of to-morrow—the first question; and the second, which, to tell the truth, ought to take precedence over the other—whether it would not be better after all, in the combined interests of the Church, the monarchy, the nobility and the bourgeoisie, simply to let them, without any more ado, send Louis to the guillotine! ”

“ We go say to the Girondins: 'Look you, citizens, we are here, a hundred thousand good patriots of Paris; and down there, in the country, other hundreds of thousands of good patriots, all convinced, like us, that you have not enough hair on your eyebrows to save the Republic. That is settled! We have the numbers, the force and the cannon for you, but these numbers, this force, these cannon we do not want to use. Only we say to you, in the name of the country: Citizen Girondins, when your loins are not strong enough to bear the burden, leave it to others more robust. ”

“ Oliver's breast heaved; he drew a faint breath. Victoria and Madam Desmarais carried the almost suffocated lad to the window. There he was propped up in a chair; his ashen features, covered with icy sweat, slowly regained a slight color, and little by little life returned to his bosom.
Two hours later he had quite come to, and found himself in John Lebrenn's parlor, alone with Victoria. One would have difficulty to frame in his imagination a countenance of more rare perfection than that of the youth, who possessed a physiognomy of charming candor. On her part, the young woman was grave. ”

“ We all know how things stand in Paris. Let us put the question to a vote."
Madam Lebrenn spoke first. "Civil war is a terrible extremity," she said. "Vanquishers or vanquished, the mother-country has always some children to mourn. But to-day one can no longer hesitate. It is a choice between servitude or revolt. So, with my spirit in mourning for the fratricidal strife, I say to my husband, and to my son, You must fight to defend the liberties that the kingdom has not yet despoiled us of; you must fight to reconquer, if possible, the heritage of the great Republic. ”

“ At that instant in rushed one of Madam Desmarais's maids, screaming out with affright:
"Madam, Oh, madam! It is the cannon! It is the roar of artillery!"
"Great God!" exclaimed Madam Desmarais, turning pale. "And my husband! To what dangers will he be exposed!"
"Do not worry, dear mother. Father is at Versailles," spoke out Charlotte, now the comforter.
"They are attacking Paris. The counter-attack will lead on to Versailles. There will be uprisings, insurrections, massacres!"
"The suburbs are attacking the Bastille," answered Gertrude, the maid, all of a tremble. ”

“ The people is at the end of its patience; it is kicking the traces; it rebels."
"You speak words of gold, my dear Duke," answered young Mirabeau. "We shall hang them all, and we shall show ourselves without pity for those pretended revolutionists, Orleans, Talleyrand, Lafayette, and my unworthy brother Mirabeau, who has brought dishonor upon our house."
"No, no pity for traitors, to whatever class they belong—nobles, clergy, or bourgeoisie," cried the Count of Plouernel. ”

“ But Victoria, the victim of a sort of ecstatic hallucination, continued without seeming to hear me: "Does not the blood of slaves, of serfs, of vassals, despoiled, exploited, tortured, immolated by thousands, by seigniory and nobility since the Frankish conquest, cry 'Vengeance!'? Does not the blood of the Arians, massacred by thousands by Clovis's hordes at the word of the priests of Rome, cry 'Vengeance!'? Does not the blood of the Vaudois, of the Albigensians, massacred by thousands by Simon of Montfort's bandits, at the voice of the priests of Rome, cry 'Vengeance!'? ”

“ My God, my poor Monsieur Hubert! If I did not, in the first moment of anger, run you through the body with my sword, I would have been under the obligation of asking for a lettre de cachet and sending you to the Bastille."
"Because a man of your birth could not consent to fight a bourgeois?"
"Certainly; for the tribunal composed of our seigneurs the Marshals of France, to which the nobility refers its affairs of honor, would have formally prohibited the duel; and we are bound by oath to respect the decisions of Messieurs the Marshals. For the common herd we have nothing but contempt." ”

“ Considering the great events close at hand, of which the taking of the Bastille is but the precursor and sign, can you count on the full disposition of your time? The struggle once engaged between the nation and the royal power, will it not continue impetuous, implacable? Is it at a season when the liberty of the people trembles in the balance that you ought to abandon the field of battle? And still your family must live, and it can only live by your daily labor."
"Often have I said," exclaimed Victoria, "that the people has never had the time to complete the revolutions it began! ”

“ The least delay may prove so fatal that it would then no longer lie in your power to deliberate on remedies. God forbid that I should so insult the citizens of Paris as to believe them capable of assaulting the national representation! On the contrary, I doubt not but they would protect it with their own bodies, if need were; but this immense city is nursing within its bosom a horde of brigands, of bold and desperate scoundrels. They only await, with ferocious impatience, our first unguarded moment to strike us, and, consequently, to strike at the heart of the Republic itself. ”

“ Citizen Desmarais, you are arrived at the decline of life; your solitude weighs upon you. You regret, you regret each day anew the sweets of the domestic hearth; our home is and always will be open to you. Renounce your life in politics, the incessant source of your anguish and your alarms, because of your lack of steadfastness. Return to your wife and daughter; they will forget the past. But when fear has its clutch upon you, you are like a person out of his mind; though you may be in perfect safety, yet you will perish anyhow. ”

“ I said to her. "What is forward in Paris?"
"The great day of reprisals has dawned at last," replied my sister shrilly; "O, age-long martyrs of the Kings, the nobles, and the clergy! O, shades of our fathers, of our mothers! Daughters and sons of Joel, rejoice. The hour of vengeance has sounded! Ah, for centuries your sweat, your tears, your blood have flowed! Martyrs of the Kings, priests and nobles, the tyrant issue of a conquering race, at last upon your torturers has descended the day of expiation, the day of retribution!" ”

“ I have been at the massacre of the Field of Mars. Curses upon Lafayette!
The recital of this mournful event, which must be charged to the bourgeoisie, will be of service to the sons of Joel.
From early morning, the weather was magnificent. Not a cloud flecked the azure of the sky. A great mass of people, myself among them, directed their steps toward the Field of Mars, men, women and children in holiday apparel. Every face breathed joy, and on all countenances shone satisfaction. At least as many women as citizens were in the throng. ”

“ In vain I attempt to calm her, in vain I appeal to her heart, to her good sense, in order to convince her that, apart from cases of insurrection or legitimate defense, we must strike our enemies only with the sword of the law, unorganized popular justice being always blind in its execution.
"And when the sword of the law, confided to the hands of our enemies, rusts in its sheath? When treason enwraps the great criminals from justice, and insures them impunity, what shall the sovereign people do then?" Victoria asks me. ”

“ You reign but by the people and for the people. The people alone is sovereign! Let us say to the ministers: Choose between public gratitude and the vengeance of the laws. Let us say to Europe: France draws her sword; the scabbard she will fling away. Then she will wage to the death the war of the peoples against the Kings, and soon the people will embrace before the spectacle of their dethroned tyrants; the earth will be consoled, the heavens satisfied!"
Meanwhile Louis cloaked himself in a well-feigned submission to the orders of the Assembly. ”

“ But the bourgeois mistrust the workers and turn against them, when they should sustain them, guide them, direct them in the uprisings whose object is the reconquest of their common rights. The people have so far borne witness by their conduct to their affection, their trust in the bourgeoisie. They have had, they will have faith in it to the end. But sad and irreparable will be the evil for you and for us, if one day the bourgeoisie, having utilized the people to overcome the nobility, should seek to reign in the shadow of a fictitious royalty ”