The Arcades Project - Operi

Origines des Miserables," in La Revue de Paris, and in letters about the hook
which Simon puhlished in La Revue). [dlla,2]
Perrot de Chezelles in his pamphlet (.Examen dn livre des Miserables de M. Victor
IIugo (Paris, 1863), makes this more general contrihution to the characterization
of Victor Hugo: " In his dt'amas and novels he takes for his heroes a lackey like Buy
BIas, a courtesan like Marion Delorme, physically deformed beings like Tl'ihoulet.
and Quasimodo, a prostitute like Fantine, a convict like Jean Valjean. "J6 Cited in
Albert de Besancourt, Les Pamphlets contre V.H. (Paris), p. 243. [dlla,3]
Les Miserables depends, for its principal facts, on actual events. Underlying the
condemnation of Jean Val jean is a case in which a man who had stolen a loaf of
bread for his sister 's children was condemned to five years ' penal servitude.
Hugo documented such things with great exactitude . [d12,1]
A detailed representation of Lamartine 's behavior during the Fehruary Revolu­
tion is provided hy Pokrowski in an article that hases itself, in part, on diplomatic
reports hy KisseHov, the Russian ambassador to Pads at that time. These reports
are cited in the course of the article. '""Lamartine . .. admitted,' Kisseliov writes,
'that., for the time heing, France found itself in a situation that always tends to
arise when one government has just fallen and the other is not yet firmly in place.
He added, however, that the population had given proof of so lnnch good sense, of
such respect. for family and property, that lawful order in Paris would be preserved
t.hrough the momentum of things in themselves and through the good will of
the masses . . . . In eight or ten days, continued Lamartine, a national guard of
200,000 men would be organized, in addition to which there were 15,000 mounted
police, whose spirits were exeeHent, and 20,000 front-line troops, who alreudy had
encircled Paris and were to march on the dty. ' Here we must pause for a moment.
It is wen known that the pretext for recalling the troops, which since Ii'ehruary had
heen stationed at a distance from Paris, was the workers' demonstration of April
16; the conversation between Lamartine and IGsseliov, however, took place on
April 6. How hrilliantly, therefore, Marx divined (in Die KI(1.ssenlriimpje in F1'Ctnli:reich)
that the demonstl'ation was provoked solely in order to he able to caU hack
into the capital the most "reliable' part of' the 'forces of order. ' ... But let us go
further. "These masses, says Lamartine [that is, the hourgeois national guard, the
nlObile guanI, and the line infantry-M. N .P. L will keep in cheek the duh fanaties,
who depend on a few thousand hooligans and criminal elements (!), and "will nip
every excess . .. in the hud. m M. N. Pokrowski, Historische AuJsiitze (Vienna and
Berlin < 1928», Pl" 108-109 ("'Lamartine, Cavaignae und Nikolaus I"). [cl12,2]
On the sixth of April, a directive went out from Nessell'ode in Petershurg to Kissellov:
'''Nicholas and his chancellor did not conceal from their agent the fact that
they needed the alliance with France against Get'manyagainst the new red Germany
that "was beginningj with its revolutionary colors, to outshine the France