"That is because our barricade is made of good intentions."
The best thing, assuredly, is the pacific solution.
In short, let us agree that when we behold the pavement, we think of the bear, and it is a good will which renders society uneasy.
But it depends on society to save itself, it is to its own good will that we make our appeal.
No violent remedy is necessary.
To study evil amiably, to prove its existence, then to cure it.
It is to this that we invite it.
However that may be, even when fallen, above all when fallen, these men, who at every point of the universe, with their eyes fixed on France, are striving for the grand work with the inflexible logic of the ideal, are august; they give their life a free offering to progress; they accomplish the will of providence; they perform a religious act. At the appointed hour, with as much disinterestedness as an actor who answers to his cue, in obedience to the divine stage-manager, they enter the tomb.
And this hopeless combat, this stoical disappearance they accept in order to bring about the supreme and universal consequences, the magnificent and irresistibly human movement begun on the 14th of July, 1789; these soldiers are priests. The French revolution is an act of God.
Moreover, there are, and it is proper to add this distinction to the distinctions already pointed out in another chapter,--there are accepted revolutions, revolutions which are called revolutions; there are refused revolutions, which are called riots.