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CHAPTER I
WELL CUT
1831 and 1832, the two years which are immediately con-
nected with the Revolution of July, form one of the most
peculiar and striking moments of history. These two years
rise like two mountains midway between those which
precede and those which follow them. They have a revolu-
tionary grandeur. Precipices are to be distinguished there.
The social masses, the very assizes of civilization, the solid
group of superposed and adhering interests, the century-
old profiles of the ancient French formation, appear and
disappear in them every instant, athwart the storm clouds
of systems, of passions, and of theories. These appearances
and disappearances have been designated as movement and
resistance. At intervals, truth, that daylight of the human
soul, can be descried shining there.
This remarkable epoch is decidedly circumscribed and is
beginning to be sufficiently distant from us to allow of our
grasping the principal lines even at the present day.
We shall make the attempt.
The Restoration had been one of those intermediate
phases, hard to define, in which there is fatigue, buzzing,