Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  Meanwhile the internal problems piled up – pauperism, the proletariat, wages, education, the penal system, prostitution, the condition of women, riches, poverty, production, consumption, distribution, exchange, currency, credit, the rights of capital and labour – a fearsome burden.

  Outside the political parties, as such, another stir became apparent. The democratic ferment found its echo in a philosophical ferment. The élite were as unsettled as the masses, differently but as greatly. While the theorists meditated, the ground beneath their feet – that is to say, the people – traversed by revolutionary currents, convulsively trembled as though with epilepsy. The thinkers, some isolated, some forming groups that were almost communities, pondered the questions of the hour, pacifically but deeply – dispassionate miners calmly driving their galleries in the depths of a volcano, scarcely disturbed by the deep rumblings or by glimpses of the furnace.

  Their quietude was not the least noble aspect of that turbulent period. They left the question of rights to the politicians and concerned themselves with the question of happiness; what they looked for in society was the well-being of man. They endowed material problems, those of agriculture, industry, and commerce, with almost the dignity of a religion. In civilization as it comes to be shaped, a little by God and a great deal by man, interests coalesce, merge and amalgamate in such a fashion as to form a core of solid rock, following a law of dynamics patiently studied by the economists, those geologists of the body-politic. These men, grouped under a variety of labels, but who may be classified under the general heading of socialists, sought to pierce this rock and allow the living water of human felicity to gush forth from it.

  This work extended to every field, from the question of capital punishment to the question of war, and to the Rights of Man proclaimed by the French Revolution they added the rights of women and children. It will not surprise the reader that, for a variety of reasons, we do not here proceed to a profound theoretical examination of the questions propounded by socialism. We will simply indicate what they were.

  Problem One: the production of wealth.

  Problem Two: its distribution.

  Problem One embraces the question of labour and Problem Two that of wages, the first dealing with the use made of manpower and the second with the sharing of the amenities this manpower produces.

  A proper use of manpower creates a strong economy, and a proper distribution of amenities leads to the happiness of the individual. Proper distribution does not imply an equal share but an equitable share. Equity is the essence of equality.

  These two things combined – a strong economy and the happiness of the individual within it – lead to social prosperity, and social prosperity means a happy man, a free citizen, and a great nation.

  England has solved the first of these problems. She is highly successful in creating wealth, but she distributes it badly. This half-solution brings her inevitably to the two extremes of monstrous wealth and monstrous poverty. All the amenities are enjoyed by the few and all the privations are suffered by the many, that is to say, the common people: privilege, favour, monopoly, feudalism, all these are produced by their labour. It is a false and dangerous state of affairs whereby the public wealth depends on private poverty and the greatness of the State is rooted in the sufferings of the individual: an ill-assorted greatness composed wholly of materialism, into which no moral element enters.

  Communists and agrarian reformers believe they offer the solution to the second of these problems. They are mistaken. Their method of distribution kills production: equal sharing abolishes competition and, in consequence, labour. It is distribution carried out by a butcher, who kills what he distributes. It is impossible to accept these specious solutions. To destroy wealth is not to share it.

  The two problems must be solved together if they are to be properly solved, and the two solutions must form part of a single whole.

  To solve the first problem alone is to be either a Venice or an England. You will have artificial power like that of Venice or material power like that of England. You will be the bad rich man, and you will end in violence, as did Venice, or in bankruptcy, as England will do. And the world will leave you to the, because the world leaves everything to the that is based solely on egotism, everything that in the eyes of mankind does not represent a virtue or an idea.

  It must be understood that in using the words Venice and England we are not talking about peoples but about social structures, oligarchies imposed upon nations, not the nations them-selves. For nations we have always respect and sympathy. Venice the people will revive. England the aristocracy will fall; but England the nation is immortal. Having said this we may proceed.

  Solve these two problems – encourage the rich and protect the poor; abolish pauperdom; put an end to the unjust exploitation of the weak by the strong and a bridle on the innate jealousy of the man who is on his way for the man who has arrived; achieve a fair and brotherly relationship between work and wages; associate compulsory free education with the bringing-up of the young, and make knowledge the criterion of manhood; develop minds while finding work for hands; become both a powerful nation and a family of contented people; democratize private property not by abolishing it but by making it universal, so that every citizen without exception is an owner, which is easier than people think – in a word, learn how to produce wealth and how to divide it, and you will have accomplished the union of material and moral greatness; you will be worthy to call yourself France.

  This, apart from the aberrations of a few particular sects, was the message of socialism; this was what it searched for amid the facts, the plan that it proposed to men’s minds. An admirable attempt, and one that we must revere.

  It was problems such as this which so painfully afflicted Louis-Philippe: clashes of doctrine and the unforeseen necessity for statesmen to take account of the conflicting tendencies of all philosophies; the need to evolve a policy in tune with the old world and not too much in conflict with the revolutionary ideal; intimations of progress apparent beneath the turmoil; the parliamentary establishment and the man in the street; the need to compose the rivalries by which he was surrounded; his own faith in the revolution, and perhaps, finally, a sense of resignation born of the vague acceptance of an ultimate and higher right: his resolve to remain true to his own kin, his family feeling, a sincere respect for the people and his own honesty - these matters tormented Louis-Philippe and, steadfast and courageous though he was, at times overwhelmed him with the difficulty of being king.

  He had a strong sense of the structure crumbling beneath him, but it was not a crumbling into dust, since France was more than ever France.

  There were ominous threats on the horizon. A strange creeping shadow was gradually enveloping men, affairs and ideas, a shadow born of anger and renewed convictions. Things that had been hurriedly suppressed were again astir and in ferment. There was unrest in the air, a mingling of truths and sophistries which caused honest men at times to catch their breath and spirits to tremble in the general unease like leaves fluttering at the approach of a storm. Such was the tension that any chance-comer, even an unknown, might at moments strike a spark; but then the dusky obscurity closed in again. At intervals deep, sullen rumblings testified to the charge of thunder in the gathering clouds.

  Scarcely twenty months after the July Revolution, the year 1832 opened with portents of imminent disaster. A distressed populace and underfed workers; the last Prince de Condé vanished into limbo; Brussels driving out the House of Nassau as Paris had driven out the Bourbons; Belgium offering herself to a French prince and handed over to an English prince; the Russian hatred of Tsar Nicholas; at our backs two southern demons, Ferdinand in Spain and Miguel in Portugal; the earth shaking in Italy; Metternich reaching out for Bologna and France dealing roughly with the Austrians at Ancona; the sinister sound in the north of a hammer renailing Poland in her coffin; angry eyes watching France from every corner of Europe; England, that suspect ally, ready to give
a push to whatever was tottering and to fling herself upon anything ready to fall; the peerage sheltering behind Beccaria to protect four heads from the law; the fleur-de-lis scratched off the royal coach, and the cross wrenched off Notre-Dame; Lafayette diminished, Laffitte ruined; Benjamin Constant dead in poverty, Casimir Perier dead of the exhaustion of power; political sickness and social sickness declaring themselves simultaneously in the two capitals of the kingdom, the capital of intellect and the capital of labour – civil war in Paris and servile war in Lyons, and in both cities the same furnace-glow; the red glare of the crater reflected in the scowls of the people; the south fanatical, the west in turmoil; the Duchesse de Berry in La Vendée; plots, conspiracies, upheavals and finally cholera, adding to the growling mutter of ideas the dark tumult of events.

  V

  Facts making History which History ignores

  By the end of April the whole situation had worsened. The ferment was coming to the boil. Since 1830 there had been small, sporadic uprisings, rapidly suppressed, but which broke out again: symptoms of the huge underlying unrest. Something terrible was brewing, and there were portents, still unclear but vaguely to be discerned, of possible revolution. France was watching Paris and Paris was watching the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.

  The Faubourg Saint-Antoine, surreptitiously heated, was beginning to boil over. The taverns in the Rue de Charonne, odd though the adjectives may sound when applied to such places, were at once sober and tempestuous.

  In these places the government was openly under attack, and the question of ‘to fight or do nothing’ was publicly debated. There were back-rooms where workers were made to swear ‘that they would come out on to the streets at the first sound of the alarm and would fight, no matter how numerous their enemies’. When they had pledged themselves a man seated in a corner of the room would proclaim in a ringing voice, ‘You have taken the oath! You have sworn!’ Sometimes the proceedings took place in an upstairs room behind closed doors, and here the ceremony was almost masonic. The initiate was required to swear ‘that he would serve the cause as he would serve his own father’. This was the formula.

  In the downstairs rooms ‘subversive’ pamphlets were read –‘blackguarding the government’, according to a secret report. Remarks such as the following were heard: ‘I don’t know the names of the leaders. We shall only be given two hours’ notice on the day.’ A workman said: ‘There are three hundred of us. If we put in ten sous each that will be 150 francs for ball and powder.’ Another said: ‘I don’t ask for six months or even two. We can be on level terms with the government in a fortnight. With 25,000 men we can stand up to them.’ Another: ‘ I never get any sleep because I’m up all night making cartridges.’ Now and then, ‘well-dressed men, looking like bourgeois’ appeared, causing ‘some embarrassment’ and ‘seeming to be in positions of command’. They shook hands with ‘the more important’ and quickly departed, never staying longer than ten minutes. Significant remarks were exchanged in undertones. ‘The plot is ripe, it’s all prepared’ … ‘Everybody was muttering things like this,’ in the words of a man who was present. Such was the state of excitement that one day a workman cried aloud in a café, ‘We haven’t the weapons!’, to which one of his comrades replied, ‘But the military have!’ – unconsciously parodying Bonaparte’s proclamation to the army in Italy. ‘When it came to something very secret,’ another agent’s report said, ‘they did not divulge it in those places.’ It is hard to imagine what more they had to conceal, when so much was said.

  Some meetings were held at regular intervals, and certain of these were confined to eight or ten men, always the same. Other meetings were open to all comers, and the rooms were so crowded that many had to stand. There were men who came from enthusiasm for the cause, and others ‘because it was on their way to work’. As in the Revolution, there were ardent women who embraced all newcomers.

  Other revealing facts came to light. A man walked into a café, had a drink and walked out again, saying to the proprietor: ‘The revolution will pay.’ Revolutionary agents were elected by vote in a café off the Rue de Charonne, the votes being collected in caps. One group of workers met on the premises of a fencing-master in the Rue de Cotte. There was a trophy on the wall consisting of wooden two-handed swords (espadons), singlesticks, bludgeons, and foils. One day the buttons were taken off the foils. One of the men said, ‘There are twenty-five of us, but they don’t reckon I’m worth anything. I’m just a cog in the machine.’ He was Quénisset, later to become famous.

  Small, significant trifles acquired a strange notoriety. A woman sweeping her doorstep said to another woman, ‘We’ve been doing hard labour for a long time, making cartridges.’ Posters appeared in the open street, appeals addressed to the Garde Nationale in the départements. One of these was signed, ‘Burtot, wine-merchant’.

  One day a man with a black beard and an Italian accent stood on a boundary-stone outside the door of a wine-shop in the Marché Lenoir and read out a striking document that seemed to have emanated from a secret source. Groups of people gathered and applauded. The passages which most stirred them have been recorded. ‘Our doctrines are suppressed, our proclamations torn up, our billposters hounded and imprisoned … The recent collapse of the textile industry has converted many moderates … The future of the people is taking shape in our secret ranks … This is the choice that confronts us: action or reaction, revolution or counterrevolution. For no one in these days believes any longer in neutralism or inertia. For the people or against the people, that is the question, and there is no other… On the day we no longer suit you, destroy us; but until then, help us in what we are doing.’ This was read out in broad daylight.

  Other still more startling occurrences were, because of their very audacity, viewed with suspicion by the people. On 4 April 1832 a man climbed on to the boundary-stone at the corner of the Rue Sainte-Marguerite and proclaimed, ‘I am a Babouviste!’; but they fancied that behind Babeuf lurked Gisquet, the Prefect of Police.

  This particular speaker said, among other things:

  ‘Down with property! The left-wing opposition is cowardly and treacherous. They preach revolution for effect. They call them-selves democrats so as not to be beaten and royalists so as not to have to fight. The republicans are wolves in sheeps’ clothing. Citizen workers, beware of the republicans!’

  ‘Silence, citizen spy!’ shouted a workman, and this brought the speech to an end.

  There were strange episodes. One evening a workman near the canal met a ‘well-dressed man’ who said to him: ‘Where are you going, citizen?’ … ‘Monsieur,’ the workman replied, ‘I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance’ … ‘But I know you well,’ the man said. And he went on: ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m an agent of the committee. You’re suspected of not being reliable. Let me warn you, if you give anything away, that you’re being watched.’ He then shook the workman by the hand and left him, saying: ‘We shall meet again.’

  Police agents reported scraps of conversation overheard not only in the cafés but in the street.

  ‘Get yourself signed on quickly,’ a weaver said to a cabinetmaker.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s going to be shooting.’

  Two ragged pedestrians exchanged remarks reminiscent of the jacquerie:

  ‘Who governs us?’

  ‘Why, Monsieur Philippe.’

  ‘No, it’s the bourgeoisie.’

  It would be wrong to suppose that we use that word jacquerie in any pejorative sense. The ‘Jacques’ were the poor, and right is on the side of the hungry.

  A man was heard to say to another: ‘We have a fine plan of campaign.’

  Four men seated in a ditch at the Barrière-du-Trône crossroads were holding a muttered conversation of which the following sentence was overheard:

  ‘They’ll do their best not to let him go for any more walks in Paris.’

  Who was the ‘he’? An ominous riddle.

  ‘The principal leaders’, as t
hey were called in the Faubourg, kept aloof. They were believed to meet in a café near the Pointe Sainte-Eustache, and a certain Auguste, president of the Tailors’ Benefit Society in the Rue Mondétour, was said to be the link between them and the workers of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. However, the identity of these leaders was never finally established, and no positive fact emerged to invalidate the lofty reply made later by one of the accused on trial by the Court of Peers in answer to the question:

  ‘Who was your chief?’

  ‘I knew of no chief, and recognized none.’

  But all these were no more than words, suggestive but inconclusive, fragments of hearsay, remarks often without context. There were other portents.

  A carpenter engaged in the erection of a wooden fence round the site of a house under construction picked up on the site a fragment of a torn letter on which he read the following: ‘The committee must take steps to prevent the enlistment in its sections of recruits for other associations …’ And further: ‘We have learned that there are rifles, to the number of five or six thousand, at an armourer’s shop in the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière (No. 5 bis). That section has no arms.’

  This so startled the carpenter that he showed it to his comrades, and they found near to it another torn sheet of paper which was even more revealing. We reproduce the exact format for the sake of the document’s historic interest.

  The persons in the secret learned only later what the four capital letters stood for – Quinturians, Centurians, Decurians, Éclaireurs (scouts). The letters u og a fe were a coded date – 15 April 1832. Under each of the capital letters were names with brief remarks appended. Thus: Q. Bannerel. 8 muskets. 83 cartridges. A safe man. – C. Boubière. I pistol. A pound of powder. – E. Teissier. I sabre. I ammunition pouch. Reliable. – Terreur. 8 muskets. Sturdy … And so on.