They proclaimed right furiously; they were desirous, if only with fear and trembling, to force the human race to paradise. They seemed barbarians, and they were saviours. They demanded light with the mask of night.
Facing these men, who were ferocious, we admit, and terrifying, but ferocious and terrifying for good ends, there are other men, smiling, embroidered, gilded, beribboned, starred, in silk stockings, in white plumes, in yellow gloves, in varnished shoes, who, with their elbows on a velvet table, beside a marble chimneypiece, insist gently on demeanor and the preservation of the past, of the Middle Ages, of divine right, of fanaticism, of innocence, of slavery, of the death penalty, of war, glorifying in low tones and with politeness, the sword, the stake, and the scaffold. For our part, if we were forced to make a choice between the barbarians of civilization and the civilized men of barbarism, we should choose the barbarians.
But, thank Heaven, still another choice is possible. No perpendicular fall is necessary, in front any more than in the rear.
Neither despotism nor terrorism. We desire progress with a gentle slope.
God takes care of that. God’s whole policy consists in rendering slopes less steep.
VI
Enjolras and His Lieutenants
It was about this epoch that Enjolras, in view of a possible catastrophe, instituted a kind of mysterious census.