The Dead Are in the Right and the Living Are Not in the Wrong — Les Misérables

The death agony of the barricade was about to begin. Everything contributed to its tragic majesty: crashes in the air, the breath of armed masses in streets that were not visible, the tocsin of Saint-Merry which now had the accents of a sob, the beauty of the day, and the alarming silence of the houses. Since the preceding evening the two rows of houses in the Rue de la Chanvrerie had become two walls. Ferocious walls. Doors closed, windows closed, shutters closed. When the city consents, the house fraternizes with the fortress. When the masses disown the movement, the city changes into a desert, and the street turns into a defile to help the army take the wall. A house is an escarpment. A door is a refusal. This wall hears, sees, and will not. This wall is a judge. It gazes at you and condemns you. No one has gone out of those houses for four and twenty hours, but no one is missing from them. They eat and drink. They are afraid. Sometimes fear turns to passion. What do these people want. Let them get out of the scrape. It does not concern us. The insurgent is in the death-throes in front of that house. These walls have ears of flesh, and these men have bowels of stone.

Whom shall he reproach. No one and every one. It is always at its own risk that a hope which cannot wait is converted into a fight. It almost always comes too soon. Then it accepts catastrophe in lieu of triumph. It is indomitable in the face of obstacles and gentle towards ingratitude. He who despairs is in the wrong. Progress sleeps, and when it stands again it is taller. The living have their pardonable dose of egotism. I exist, murmurs that some one whose name is All. I am young and in love. I am the father of a family. I desire to live, leave me in peace. Hence a profound cold broods over the vanguard. A hope that makes war borrows battle from the lie of yesterday. Every blade has two edges. Having made that reservation, it is impossible not to admire the combatants of the future, whether they succeed or not. It is perhaps in failure that they possess the most majesty. It certainly is necessary that some one should take the part of the vanquished.

An insurrection which breaks out is an idea passing its examination before the people. If the people lets fall a black ball, the idea is dried fruit. What the young men of this street were combating was not precisely one king. They wished to overturn the usurpation of man over man. They march straight before us, pledged, and they do not draw back. Sometimes the stomach paralyzes the heart. A nation may taste the ideal, then bite the mire, and find it good. A battle like this one is a convulsion towards the ideal. The book the reader has under his eye is the march from evil to good, from the unjust to the just, from night to day, from hell to heaven. Point of departure: matter. Point of arrival: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end.