as it eddies
about, mounts, descends, thunders, tears, razes, crushes, demolishes,
uproots, bearing with it great natures and small, the strong man and the
feeble mind, the tree trunk and the stalk of straw. Woe to him whom it
bears away as well as to him whom it strikes! It breaks the one against
the other.

It communicates to those whom it seizes an indescribable and
extraordinary power. It fills the first-comer with the force of events;
it converts everything into projectiles. It makes a cannon-ball of a
rough stone, and a general of a porter.

If we are to believe certain oracles of crafty political views, a little
revolt is desirable from the point of view of power. System: revolt
strengthens those governments which it does not overthrow. It puts
the army to the test; it consecrates the bourgeoisie, it draws out
the muscles of the police; it demonstrates the force of the social
framework. It is an exercise in gymnastics; it is almost hygiene. Power
is in better health after a revolt, as a man is after a good rubbing
down.

Revolt, thirty years ago, was regarded from still other points of view.

There is for everything a theory, which proclaims itself "good sense";
Philintus against Alcestis; mediation offered between the false and the
true; explanation, admonition, rather haughty extenuation which, because
it is mingled with blame and excuse, thinks itself wisdom, and is often
only pedantry. A whole political school called "the golden mean" has
been the outcome of this. As between cold water and hot water, it is
the lukewarm water party. This school with its false depth, all on the
surface, which dissects effects without going back to first causes,
chides from its height of a demi-science, the agitation of the public
square.

If we listen to this school, "The riots which complicated the affair
of 1830 deprived that great event of a portion of its purity. The
Revolution of July had been a fine popular gale, abruptly followed
by blue sky. They made the cloudy sky reappear. They caused that
revolution, at first so remarkable for its unanimity, to degenerate into
a quarrel. In the Revolution of July, as in all progress accomplished by
fits and starts, there had been secret fractures; these riots rendered
them perceptible. It might have been said: 'Ah! this is broken.' After
the Revolution of July, one was sensible only of deliverance; after the
riots, one was conscious of a catastrophe.

"All revolt closes the