The Revolution of 1830 was accomplished. Accomplished (we will repeat it, print it, engrave it if necessary on iron and brass, on bronze and steel), accomplished, not alone by the cautious actors of the past fifteen years' comedy, who hid, as it were, behind the wings, whilst the people played that Three Days' bloody drama; not only by Casimir Périer, Laffitte, Benjamin Constant, Sébastiani, Guizot, Mauguin, by Choiseul, Odilon Barrot and the three Dupins. No! those actors were not even behind the wings; that would have been too near the stage for them! They kept at home, carefully guarded, hermetically sealed. With such as they, there was never any mention of resistance other than one legally organised, and, when the Louvre and Tuileries were being taken, they still went on discussing in their drawing-rooms the terms of a protest which many of them yet considered too risky a step to forward. The people who accomplished the Revolution of 1830 were those I saw at work, and who saw me there in their midst; those who entered the Louvre and the Tuileries by the broken doors and windows were, alas! (I may be pardoned this mournful exclamation, since most of them are now either dead or prisoners or exiled), Godefroy Cavaignac, Baude, Degousée, Higonnet, Grouvelle, Coste, Guinard, Charras, Étienne Arago, Lothon, Millotte, d'Hostel, Chalas, Gauja, Baduel, Bixio, Goudchaux, Bastide, the three brothers Lebon (Olympiade, Charles and Napoleon: the first was killed and the other two wounded in the attack on the Louvre), Joubert, Charles Teste, Taschereau, Béranger and others whose forgiveness I ask if I have either forgotten or not named them. I also ask pardon of some of those whom I name and who would perhaps prefer not to have been mentioned. Those who accomplished the Revolution of 1830 were the fiery youths of the heroic Proletariat which, it is true, lit the fires, but extinguished them with their own blood; those men of the people who are scattered when the work is achieved, and who die of hunger after having mounted guard by the Treasury gates, who stand on tiptoe with bare feet, in the streets, to watch the convivial parasites of power admitted to the care of offices, to the plums of good posts and to a share in all high honours, to the detriment of their less fortunate brethren. The men who made the Revolution of 1830 were the same who, two years later, were killed at Saint-Mery for the same cause. But, this time, a change of name was given them just because they themselves had not changed their principles, and, instead of being called "heroes," they were styled "rebels." Only those renegades who change their opinions to suit the times can avoid the epithet of rebel, when different powers succeed one another. BOOK III CHAPTER I