1778 Les Miserables
Comtes Gerard and Drouet, one of Napoleon’s marshals in
petto. The treaties of 1815 removed him as a personal of-
fence. He hated Wellington with a downright hatred which
pleased the multitude; and, for seventeen years, he majesti-
cally preserved the sadness of Waterloo, paying hardly any
attention to intervening events. In his death agony, at his
last hour, he clasped to his breast a sword which had been
presented to him by the officers of the Hundred Days. Na-
poleon had died uttering the word army, Lamarque uttering
the word country.
His death, which was expected, was dreaded by the peo-
ple as a loss, and by the government as an occasion. This
death was an affliction. Like everything that is bitter, afflic-
tion may turn to revolt. This is what took place.
On the preceding evening, and on the morning of the
5th of June, the day appointed for Lamarque’s burial, the
Faubourg Saint-Antoine, which the procession was to touch
at, assumed a formidable aspect. This tumultuous network
of streets was filled with rumors. They armed themselves as
best they might. Joiners carried off door-weights of their es-
tablishment ‘to break down doors.’ One of them had made
himself a dagger of a stocking-weaver’s hook by breaking
off the hook and sharpening the stump. Another, who was
in a fever ‘to attack,’ slept wholly dressed for three days. A
carpenter named Lombier met a comrade, who asked him:
‘Whither are you going?’ ‘Eh! well, I have no weapons.’
‘What then?’ ‘I’m going to my timber-yard to get my com-
passes.’ ‘What for?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Lombier. A certain
Jacqueline, an expeditious man, accosted some passing ar-