Dantès, Edmond (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; France -- History -- February Revolution, 1848
women and children in the streets of Lyons, and on their own
hearthstones, in the course of this insurrection, was hideous, and is
graphically portrayed in the memorial of our friend Ledru Rollin, as
advocate in the matter. But, as if all this were not enough for our
persecuted cause, the decease of the great and good Lafayette, the idol
of freemen all the world over, took place in the following May. Alas!
his sun went down in clouds. His end was dark. Bitter maledictions
quivered on his dying lips. He had lived to mourn that July day, only
three years before, when, on the steps of the Hotel de Ville, he had,
with his own hands, been called to invest a cold-blooded, perfidious,
selfish, and most ungrateful tyrant with Royal robes. Alas! there was
order in Lyons--Lafayette was in his grave--peace reigned in Paris--the
House of Orleans triumphed!"
"Those were dark days," said Marrast, sadly.
"They were, dear Armand, dark, indeed, for you and your friends, for
your journal had been suppressed, and you were an inmate, with
Cavaignac, of Sainte-Pelagie."
"Whence you both, bravely and boldly effected your escape more than a
year afterwards and fled to England, to the most glorious discomfiture
of the knaves who put you there!" cried Rollin. "Vive la Republique!
yet, Messieurs! We've all seen dark days, and the present is none of the
brightest; and we've all come together at these old headquarters of
liberty just to be unhappy together, just to help each other be
miserable, which, in fact, is vastly happier unhappiness than being
miserable alone. At all events, that's what I want. But it can't always
be right. I predict a revolution before another ten years shall have
rolled round, which shall make immortals of us all--that revolution for
which we have been waiting, watching, toiling and writing, lo! now these
thirteen years and upward, for the which waiting, watching, toiling and
writing we have some of us been fined, who had money enough to pay a
fine, and others imprisoned and hunted about and persecuted. Why,
there's Albert and Flocon haven't been able to get a franc cleverly warm
in their pockets these ten years, before forth it was drawn in the form
of a fine; while as for Marrast, he has the perfect air and bearing of a
bandit, so often has he seen the inside of a dungeon; and our friend
Albert isn't much better looking. As for Louis and myself, why, we never
knew what it was to have a franc get warm in our pockets, so we escaped
having any drawn forth by Ministers, and they have never thought us
worth prosecuting or imprisoning. But they may change their minds when
Louis' book, that is to make us all immortal, comes out. Eh, Louis?"
Louis Blanc smiled, but made no answer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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