CHAPTER XI--TO SCOFF, TO REIGN

  There is no limit to Paris. No city has had that domination whichsometimes derides those whom it subjugates. To please you, O Athenians!exclaimed Alexander. Paris makes more than the law, it makes thefashion; Paris sets more than the fashion, it sets the routine. Parismay be stupid, if it sees fit; it sometimes allows itself this luxury;then the universe is stupid in company with it; then Paris awakes, rubsits eyes, says: "How stupid I am!" and bursts out laughing in the faceof the human race. What a marvel is such a city! it is a strange thingthat this grandioseness and this burlesque should be amicable neighbors,that all this majesty should not be thrown into disorder by all thisparody, and that the same mouth can to-day blow into the trump of theJudgment Day, and to-morrow into the reed-flute! Paris has a sovereignjoviality. Its gayety is of the thunder and its farce holds a sceptre.

  Its tempest sometimes proceeds from a grimace. Its explosions, its days,its masterpieces, its prodigies, its epics, go forth to the bounds ofthe universe, and so also do its cock-and-bull stories. Its laugh is themouth of a volcano which spatters the whole earth. Its jests are sparks.It imposes its caricatures as well as its ideal on people; the highestmonuments of human civilization accept its ironies and lend theireternity to its mischievous pranks. It is superb; it has a prodigious14th of July, which delivers the globe; it forces all nations to takethe oath of tennis; its night of the 4th of August dissolves in threehours a thousand years of feudalism; it makes of its logic the muscleof unanimous will; it multiplies itself under all sorts of forms ofthe sublime; it fills with its light Washington, Kosciusko, Bolivar,Bozzaris, Riego, Bem, Manin, Lopez, John Brown, Garibaldi; it iseverywhere where the future is being lighted up, at Boston in 1779,at the Isle de Léon in 1820, at Pesth in 1848, at Palermo in 1860, itwhispers the mighty countersign: Liberty, in the ear of the Americanabolitionists grouped about the boat at Harper's Ferry, and in the earof the patriots of Ancona assembled in the shadow, to the Archi beforethe Gozzi inn on the seashore; it creates Canaris; it creates Quiroga;it creates Pisacane; it irradiates the great on earth; it was whileproceeding whither its breath urge them, that Byron perished atMissolonghi, and that Mazet died at Barcelona; it is the tribune underthe feet of Mirabeau, and a crater under the feet of Robespierre;its books, its theatre, its art, its science, its literature, itsphilosophy, are the manuals of the human race; it has Pascal, Régnier,Corneille, Descartes, Jean-Jacques: Voltaire for all moments, Molièrefor all centuries; it makes its language to be talked by the universalmouth, and that language becomes the word; it constructs in all mindsthe idea of progress, the liberating dogmas which it forges are for thegenerations trusty friends, and it is with the soul of its thinkers andits poets that all heroes of all nations have been made since 1789; thisdoes not prevent vagabondism, and that enormous genius which is calledParis, while transfiguring the world by its light, sketches in charcoalBouginier's nose on the wall of the temple of Theseus and writes_Credeville the thief_ on the Pyramids.

  Paris is always showing its teeth; when it is not scolding it islaughing.

  Such is Paris. The smoke of its roofs forms the ideas of the universe. Aheap of mud and stone, if you will, but, above all, a moral being. It ismore than great, it is immense. Why? Because it is daring.

  To dare; that is the price of progress.

  All sublime conquests are, more or less, the prizes of daring. Inorder that the Revolution should take place, it does not suffice thatMontesquieu should foresee it, that Diderot should preach it, thatBeaumarchais should announce it, that Condorcet should calculate it,that Arouet should prepare it, that Rousseau should premeditate it; itis necessary that Danton should dare it.

  The cry: _Audacity! _ is a _Fiat lux_. It is necessary, for the sake ofthe forward march of the human race, that there should be proud lessonsof courage permanently on the heights. Daring deeds dazzle history andare one of man's great sources of light. The dawn dares when it rises.To attempt, to brave, to persist, to persevere, to be faithful to one'sself, to grasp fate bodily, to astound catastrophe by the small amountof fear that it occasions us, now to affront unjust power, again toinsult drunken victory, to hold one's position, to stand one's ground;that is the example which nations need, that is the light whichelectrifies them. The same formidable lightning proceeds from the torchof Prometheus to Cambronne's short pipe.