1446 Les Miserables
paradise. They seemed barbarians, and they were saviours.
They demanded light with the mask of night.
Facing these men, who were ferocious, we admit, and
terrifying, but ferocious and terrifying for good ends, there
are other men, smiling, embroidered, gilded, beribboned,
starred, in silk stockings, in white plumes, in yellow gloves,
in varnished shoes, who, with their elbows on a velvet table,
beside a marble chimney-piece, insist gently on demean-
or and the preservation of the past, of the Middle Ages,
of divine right, of fanaticism, of innocence, of slavery, of
the death penalty, of war, glorifying in low tones and with
politeness, the sword, the stake, and the scaffold. For our
part, if we were forced to make a choice between the barbar-
ians of civilization and the civilized men of barbarism, we
should choose the barbarians.
But, thank Heaven, still another choice is possible. No
perpendicular fall is necessary, in front any more than in
the rear.
Neither despotism nor terrorism. We desire progress
with a gentle slope.
God takes care of that. God’s whole policy consists in
rendering slopes less steep.