t-Merry, which now had the accents of a
sob, the mildness of the weather, the splendor of the sky filled with
sun and clouds, the beauty of the day, and the alarming silence of the
houses.

For, since the preceding evening, the two rows of houses in the Rue
de la Chanvrerie had become two walls; ferocious walls, doors closed,
windows closed, shutters closed.

In those days, so different from those in which we live, when the hour
was come, when the people wished to put an end to a situation, which had
lasted too long, with a charter granted or with a legal country, when
universal wrath was diffused in the atmosphere, when the city consented
to the tearing up of the pavements, when insurrection made the
bourgeoisie smile by whispering its password in its ear, then the
inhabitant, thoroughly penetrated with the revolt, so to speak, was
the auxiliary of the combatant, and the house fraternized with the
improvised fortress which rested on it. When the situation was not
ripe, when the insurrection was not decidedly admitted, when the masses
disowned the movement, all was over with the combatants, the city was
changed into a desert around the revolt, souls grew chilled, refuges
were nailed up, and the street turned into a defile to help the army to
take the barricade.

A people cannot be forced, through surprise, to walk more quickly than
it chooses. Woe to whomsoever tries to force its hand! A people does not
let itself go at random. Then it abandons the insurrection to itself.
The insurgents become noxious, infected with the plague. A house is an
escarpment, a door is a refusal, a facade is a wall. This wall hears,
sees and will not. It might open and save you. No. This wall is a judge.
It gazes at you and condemns you. What dismal things are closed houses.
They seem dead, they are living. Life which is, as it were, suspended
there, persists there. No one has gone out of them for four and twenty
hours, but no one is missing from them. In the interior of that rock,
people go and come, go to bed and rise again; they are a family party
there; there they eat and drink; they are afraid, a terrible thing! Fear
excuses this fearful lack of hospitality; terror is mixed with it, an
extenuating circumstance. Sometimes, even, and this has been actually
seen, fear turns to passion; fright may change into fury, as prudence
does into rage; hence this wise saying: "The enraged moderates." There
are outbursts of supreme terror, whence sp