Chương Chương 225 · BADLY SEWED

But the task of sages is one thing, the task of clever men is another.

The Revolution of 1830 came to a sudden halt.

As soon as a revolution has made the coast, the skilful make haste to

prepare the shipwreck.

The skilful in our century have conferred on themselves the title of

Statesmen; so that this word, _statesmen_, has ended by becoming

somewhat of a slang word. It must be borne in mind, in fact, that

wherever there is nothing but skill, there is necessarily pettiness. To

say “the skilful” amounts to saying “the mediocre.”

In the same way, to say “statesmen” is sometimes equivalent to saying

“traitors.” If, then, we are to believe the skilful, revolutions like

the Revolution of July are severed arteries; a prompt ligature is

indispensable. The right, too grandly proclaimed, is shaken. Also,

right once firmly fixed, the state must be strengthened. Liberty once

assured, attention must be directed to power.

Here the sages are not, as yet, separated from the skilful, but they

begin to be distrustful. Power, very good. But, in the first place,

what is power? In the second, whence comes it? The skilful do not seem

to hear the murmured objection, and they continue their manœuvres.

According to the politicians, who are ingenious in putting the mask of

necessity on profitable fictions, the first requirement of a people

after a revolution, when this people forms part of a monarchical

continent, is to procure for itself a dynasty. In this way, say they,

peace, that is to say, time to dress our wounds, and to repair the

house, can be had after a revolution. The dynasty conceals the

scaffolding and covers the ambulance. Now, it is not always easy to

procure a dynasty.

If it is absolutely necessary, the first man of genius or even the

first man of fortune who comes to hand suffices for the manufacturing

of a king. You have, in the first case, Napoleon; in the second,

Iturbide.

But the first family that comes to hand does not suffice to make a

dynasty. There is necessarily required a certain modicum of antiquity

in a race, and the wrinkle of the centuries cannot be improvised.

If we place ourselves at the point of view of the “statesmen,” after

making all allowances, of course, after a revolution, what are the

qualities of the king which result from it? He may be and it is useful

for him to be a revolutionary; that is to say, a participant in his own

person in that revolution, that he should have lent a hand to it, that

he should have either compromised or distinguished himself therein,

that he should have touched the axe or wielded the sword in it.

What are the qualities of a dynasty? It should be national; that is to

say, revolutionary at a distance, not through acts committed, but by

reason of ideas accepted. It should be composed of past and be

historic; be composed of future and be sympathetic.

All this explains why the early revolutions contented themselves with

finding a man, Cromwell or Napoleon; and why the second absolutely

insisted on finding a family, the House of Brunswick or the House of

Orleans.

Royal houses resemble those Indian fig-trees, each branch of which,

bending over to the earth, takes root and becomes a fig-tree itself.

Each branch may become a dynasty. On the sole condition that it shall

bend down to the people.

Such is the theory of the skilful.

Here, then, lies the great art: to make a little render to success the

sound of a catastrophe in order that those who profit by it may tremble

from it also, to season with fear every step that is taken, to augment

the curve of the transition to the point of retarding progress, to dull

that aurora, to denounce and retrench the harshness of enthusiasm, to

cut all angles and nails, to wad triumph, to muffle up right, to

envelop the giant-people in flannel, and to put it to bed very

speedily, to impose a diet on that excess of health, to put Hercules on

the treatment of a convalescent, to dilute the event with the

expedient, to offer to spirits thirsting for the ideal that nectar

thinned out with a potion, to take one’s precautions against too much

success, to garnish the revolution with a shade.

1830 practised this theory, already applied to England by 1688.

1830 is a revolution arrested midway. Half of progress, quasi-right.

Now, logic knows not the “almost,” absolutely as the sun knows not the

candle.

Who arrests revolutions half-way? The bourgeoisie?

Why?

Because the bourgeoisie is interest which has reached satisfaction.

Yesterday it was appetite, to-day it is plenitude, to-morrow it will be

satiety.

The phenomenon of 1814 after Napoleon was reproduced in 1830 after

Charles X.

The attempt has been made, and wrongly, to make a class of the

bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie is simply the contented portion of the

people. The bourgeois is the man who now has time to sit down. A chair

is not a caste.

But through a desire to sit down too soon, one may arrest the very

march of the human race. This has often been the fault of the

bourgeoisie.

One is not a class because one has committed a fault. Selfishness is

not one of the divisions of the social order.

Moreover, we must be just to selfishness. The state to which that part

of the nation which is called the bourgeoisie aspired after the shock

of 1830 was not the inertia which is complicated with indifference and

laziness, and which contains a little shame; it was not the slumber

which presupposes a momentary forgetfulness accessible to dreams; it

was the halt.

The halt is a word formed of a singular double and almost contradictory

sense: a troop on the march, that is to say, movement; a stand, that is

to say, repose.

The halt is the restoration of forces; it is repose armed and on the

alert; it is the accomplished fact which posts sentinels and holds

itself on its guard.

The halt presupposes the combat of yesterday and the combat of

to-morrow.

It is the partition between 1830 and 1848.

What we here call combat may also be designated as progress.

The bourgeoisie then, as well as the statesmen, required a man who

should express this word Halt. An Although-Because. A composite

individuality, signifying revolution and signifying stability, in other

terms, strengthening the present by the evident compatibility of the

past with the future.

This man was “already found.” His name was Louis Philippe d’Orleans.

The 221 made Louis Philippe King. Lafayette undertook the coronation.

He called it _the best of republics_. The town-hall of Paris took the

place of the Cathedral of Rheims.

This substitution of a half-throne for a whole throne was “the work of

1830.”

When the skilful had finished, the immense vice of their solution

became apparent. All this had been accomplished outside the bounds of

absolute right. Absolute right cried: “I protest!” then, terrible to

say, it retired into the darkness.