1972 Les Miserables
ciples which are its life, its masterful deeds against the right,
are its popular coups d’etat and should be repressed. The
man of probity sacrifices himself, and out of his very love
for this crowd, he combats it. But how excusable he feels it
even while holding out against it! How he venerates it even
while resisting it! This is one of those rare moments when,
while doing that which it is one’s duty to do, one feels some-
thing which disconcerts one, and which would dissuade
one from proceeding further; one persists, it is necessary,
but conscience, though satisfied, is sad, and the accomplish-
ment of duty is complicated with a pain at the heart.
June, 1848, let us hasten to say, was an exceptional fact,
and almost impossible of classification, in the philosophy of
history. All the words which we have just uttered, must be
discarded, when it becomes a question of this extraordinary
revolt, in which one feels the holy anxiety of toil claiming its
rights. It was necessary to combat it, and this was a duty, for
it attacked the republic. But what was June, 1848, at bottom?
A revolt of the people against itself.
Where the subject is not lost sight of, there is no di-
gression; may we, then, be permitted to arrest the reader’s
attention for a moment on the two absolutely unique barri-
cades of which we have just spoken and which characterized
this insurrection.
One blocked the entrance to the Faubourg Saint An-
toine; the other defended the approach to the Faubourg du
Temple; those before whom these two fearful masterpieces
of civil war reared themselves beneath the brilliant blue sky
of June, will never forget them.