1006 Les Miserables
CHAPTER XI
TO SCOFF, TO REIGN
There is no limit to Paris. No city has had that domina-
tion which sometimes derides those whom it subjugates. To
please you, O Athenians! exclaimed Alexander. Paris makes
more than the law, it makes the fashion; Paris sets more
than the fashion, it sets the routine. Paris may be stupid, if it
sees fit; it sometimes allows itself this luxury; then the uni-
verse is stupid in company with it; then Paris awakes, rubs
its eyes, says: ‘How stupid I am!’ and bursts out laughing in
the face of the human race. What a marvel is such a city! it
is a strange thing that this grandioseness and this burlesque
should be amicable neighbors, that all this majesty should
not be thrown into disorder by all this parody, and that the
same mouth can to-day blow into the trump of the Judg-
ment Day, and to-morrow into the reed-flute! Paris has a
sovereign joviality. Its gayety is of the thunder and its farce
holds a sceptre.
Its tempest sometimes proceeds from a grimace. Its ex-
plosions, its days, its masterpieces, its prodigies, its epics, go
forth to the bounds of the universe, and so also do its cock-
and-bull stories. Its laugh is the mouth of a volcano which