1428 Les Miserables
moving and fermenting. At times the conscience of the
honest man resumed its breathing, so great was the discom-
fort of that air in which sophisms were intermingled with
truths. Spirits trembled in the social anxiety like leaves at
the approach of a storm. The electric tension was such that
at certain instants, the first comer, a stranger, brought light.
Then the twilight obscurity closed in again. At intervals,
deep and dull mutterings allowed a judgment to be formed
as to the quantity of thunder contained by the cloud.
Twenty months had barely elapsed since the Revolution
of July, the year 1832 had opened with an aspect of some-
thing impending and threatening.
The distress of the people, the laborers without bread,
the last Prince de Conde engulfed in the shadows, Brussels
expelling the Nassaus as Paris did the Bourbons, Belgium
offering herself to a French Prince and giving herself to an
English Prince, the Russian hatred of Nicolas, behind us the
demons of the South, Ferdinand in Spain, Miguel in Por-
tugal, the earth quaking in Italy, Metternich extending his
hand over Bologna, France treating Austria sharply at An-
cona, at the North no one knew what sinister sound of the
hammer nailing up Poland in her coffin, irritated glances
watching France narrowly all over Europe, England, a sus-
pected ally, ready to give a push to that which was tottering
and to hurl herself on that which should fall, the peerage
sheltering itself behind Beccaria to refuse four heads to the
law, the fleurs-de-lys erased from the King’s carriage, the
cross torn from Notre Dame, Lafayette lessened, Laffitte ru-
ined, Benjamin Constant dead in indigence, Casimir Perier