1140 Les Miserables
ache.’
In the last corner, they were talking politics. The Char-
ter which had been granted was getting roughly handled.
Combeferre was upholding it weakly. Courfeyrac was
energetically making a breach in it. On the table lay an un-
fortunate copy of the famous Touquet Charter. Courfeyrac
had seized it, and was brandishing it, mingling with his ar-
guments the rattling of this sheet of paper.
‘In the first place, I won’t have any kings; if it were only
from an economical point of view, I don’t want any; a king is
a parasite. One does not have kings gratis. Listen to this: the
dearness of kings. At the death of Francois I., the national
debt of France amounted to an income of thirty thousand
livres; at the death of Louis XIV. it was two milliards, six
hundred millions, at twenty-eight livres the mark, which
was equivalent in 1760, according to Desmarets, to four
milliards, five hundred millions, which would to-day be
equivalent to twelve milliards. In the second place, and no
offence to Combeferre, a charter granted is but a poor ex-
pedient of civilization. To save the transition, to soften the
passage, to deaden the shock, to cause the nation to pass
insensibly from the monarchy to democracy by the practice
of constitutional fictions,—what detestable reasons all those
are! No! no! let us never enlighten the people with false day-
light. Principles dwindle and pale in your constitutional
cellar. No illegitimacy, no compromise, no grant from the
king to the people. In all such grants there is an Article 14.
By the side of the hand which gives there is the claw which
snatches back. I refuse your charter point-blank. A charter