30 Les Miserables
the least understood, there were people in the town who
said, when commenting on this conduct of the Bishop, ‘It
is affectation.’
This, however, was a remark which was confined to the
drawing-rooms. The populace, which perceives no jest in
holy deeds, was touched, and admired him.
As for the Bishop, it was a shock to him to have beheld
the guillotine, and it was a long time before he recovered
from it.
In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and
prepared, it has something about it which produces hallu-
cination. One may feel a certain indifference to the death
penalty, one may refrain from pronouncing upon it, from
saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a guillotine
with one’s own eyes: but if one encounters one of them, the
shock is violent; one is forced to decide, and to take part for
or against. Some admire it, like de Maistre; others execrate
it, like Beccaria. The guillotine is the concretion of the law;
it is called vindicte; it is not neutral, and it does not permit
you to remain neutral. He who sees it shivers with the most
mysterious of shivers. All social problems erect their inter-
rogation point around this chopping-knife. The scaffold is a
vision. The scaffold is not a piece of carpentry; the scaffold is
not a machine; the scaffold is not an inert bit of mechanism
constructed of wood, iron and cords.
It seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know
not what sombre initiative; one would say that this piece
of carpenter’s work saw, that this machine heard, that this
mechanism understood, that this wood, this iron, and these