Dantès, Edmond (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; France -- History -- February Revolution, 1848
"Such devotedness to a cause I never witnessed," said Marrast. "He puts
us all to the blush. With him it appears a matter of direct individual
interest. He is perfectly untiring. He is like one impelled by his fate.
Love or vengeance could not force onward a man to the attainment of an
object more irresistibly than he seems forced, and that, too, without
the slightest apparent stain of personal interest or ambition. That man
appears to me a miracle--a pure philanthropist. He strives, struggles,
suffers, sacrifices, and all with the sole object of ameliorating the
condition of his race."
"It is, indeed, wonderful," said Rollin, thoughtfully. "Do you know,
Marrast, anything of his past history?"
"Little, if anything. Of himself he never speaks, and I can gather
nothing from others. Even his constituents had known nothing of him but
a few months before he became their representative in the Chamber. His
popularity with them he owes to his efforts to ameliorate their
condition. At his own expense he established among them a Phalanstrie,
which is now in most successful operation."
"He is rich, then?" asked Flocon.
"Seemingly not, to judge from his habits of life," replied Marrast. "Not
a man in the Chamber is more Republican in garb, manner, equipage or
residence than he, and yet he may be rich."
"Is he married?" asked Rollin.
"He has been, I am told," said Marrast. "But we interrupt you, Louis.
You were alluding to the unusual influences now at work for our cause."
"I was about speaking of the newspaper press," said Louis Blanc. "Never
has there been known such a revolution in favor of Reform and Communist
journals, and to none is this better known than to some of ourselves.
There's Flocon's new journal, 'La Reforme,' that has leaped at once into
a circulation never before achieved but by long years of toil and
enterprise. The old 'National,' we need but to look around us to be
sure, was never more prosperous than now, while I am free to confess
that my journal, 'Le Bon Sens,' which has been a sickly child ever since
its birth, has, within three months, tripled its number of readers, or,
at least, its payers. The same is in the main true of 'Le Monde,' by La
Croix, 'Le Journal du Peuple,' by Dubose, 'Le Courier Francais,' by
Chatelain, 'La Commerce,' by Bert, 'La Minerve,' by Lemaine, 'La
Presse,' by Girardin, and all the journals in Paris which diffuse true
ideas upon labor and the rights of the people, be they in other respects
what they may. Even the 'Charivari,' which views the old King and his
Ministers as fair butts of ridicule, perceives a marked increase in its
patronage since it commenced that course, which sudden popularity
naturally excites it to increase of zeal in the same path. Besides all
this, an army of new papers, aiming to aid the great cause, have not
only sprung up of late, like mushrooms, in Paris, but all over France,
and even all over Europe; and so far appear they from interfering with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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