第一百五十七章 十一 嘲讽，称霸
十一 嘲讽，称霸
巴黎是无限量的。没有哪个城市能像它那样，时而对它所征服的人进行嘲讽。亚历山大说过：“雅典人啊，为了使你们喜悦！”巴黎可不止于制定法律，它还创造时尚。巴黎不止于引领时尚，它还设立常规。巴黎愿意愚蠢时也可以愚蠢，它有时也允许自己这样奢侈一番，于是整个宇宙也跟着它一起愚蠢。然后巴黎醒来，揉揉眼睛，说：“我多蠢啊！”便对着人类的脸哈哈大笑。这样的城市真是奇迹！奇怪的是，这种宏伟壮观和这种滑稽可笑居然能和睦相处，所有这种庄严竟不会被这种戏仿所扰乱，同一张嘴今天能吹响末日的号角，明天却能吹起芦笛！巴黎有着至高无上的欢快。它的欢乐如雷霆，它的闹剧手握权杖。
它的风暴有时源自一个鬼脸。它的爆炸、它的日子、它的杰作、它的奇迹、它的史诗，都传播到宇宙的边界，它的胡编乱造也同样远播。它的笑声是一座火山的口，喷溅到整个大地。它的玩笑是火花。它把自己的漫画像理想一样强加给人们；人类文明最崇高的纪念碑也接受它的嘲讽，并把它们的永恒借给它的恶作剧。它是卓绝的；它有一个惊人的七月十四日，解放了整个地球；它迫使所有民族宣誓效忠于网球场；它的八月四日之夜用三个小时就融化了一千年的封建制度；它使自己的逻辑成为了一致意志的肌肉；它以各种崇高形式繁衍自身；它用它的光芒照亮了华盛顿、科希丘什科、玻利瓦尔、波查里斯、列戈、贝姆、马宁、洛佩斯、约翰·布朗、加里波第；凡是未来正在照亮的地方，都有它的存在，一七七九年在波士顿，一八二〇年在莱昂岛，一八四八年在佩斯，一八六〇年在巴勒莫，它向聚集在哈珀斯费里船上的美国废奴主义者们低语那个强大的口令：自由，也向聚集在海边戈齐小旅店前阿奇拱门阴影中的安科纳爱国者们低语；它造就了卡纳里斯；它造就了基罗加；它造就了皮萨卡内；它辉耀着世界上的伟人；正是顺着它的呼吸的驱策，拜伦才死于迈索隆吉翁，马塞特才死于巴塞罗那；它是米拉波脚下的讲坛，也是罗伯斯庇尔脚下的火山口；它的书籍、它的戏剧、它的艺术、它的科学、它的文学、它的哲学，是人类的手册；它有帕斯卡、雷尼埃、高乃依、笛卡尔、让-雅克：有伏尔泰适合一切时代，有莫里哀适合一切世纪；它使它自己的语言被全人类的口所说，而这种语言变成了言辞；它在所有人的头脑中构建进步的观念；它所锻造的解放教条，对于世世代代都是忠实的朋友，自从一七八九年以来，所有民族的一切英雄都是由它的思想家和诗人的灵魂所塑造的；这并不妨碍流浪，也不妨碍这个被称为巴黎的巨大的天才，在用它自己的光芒改造世界的同时，用木炭在忒修斯神庙的墙上画着布吉尼埃的鼻子，并在金字塔上写着“小偷克雷德维尔”。
巴黎总是在龇牙咧嘴；当它不是在责骂时，它就在笑。
这就是巴黎。它屋顶上的烟雾形成了宇宙的思想。一堆泥巴和石头，如果你愿意这么说，但首先它是一个道德的存在。它不仅仅是伟大，它是浩瀚的。为什么？因为它敢作敢当。
敢作敢为；这就是进步的代价。
所有崇高的胜利，或多或少都是敢作敢当的奖赏。为了使革命得以发生，光有孟德斯鸠预见它、狄德罗宣讲它、博马舍宣告它、孔多塞计算它、阿鲁埃准备它、卢梭预先谋划它，是不够的；还需要丹东敢于发动它。
“拿出勇气来！”这一呐喊就是一道“要有光”。为了人类的前进，必须有一些高傲的勇气课，永久地屹立在高峰之上。勇敢的行为使历史眼花缭乱，是人类光辉的巨大源泉之一。黎明敢于升起。去尝试、去挑战、去坚持、去持之以恒、对自己忠诚、活生生地抓住命运、用我们所感到的微乎其微的恐惧震惊灾难，时而对抗不公的权力，时而嘲弄醉酒的胜利，坚守自己的阵地，站住自己的脚跟；这就是民族所需要的榜样，这就是激励他们的光辉。同样的骇人闪电既从普罗米修斯的火炬中发出，也从康布罗纳的短烟斗中喷出。
There is no limit to Paris. No city has had that domination which
sometimes derides those whom it subjugates. To please you, O Athenians!
exclaimed Alexander. Paris makes more than the law, it makes the
fashion; Paris sets more than the fashion, it sets the routine. Paris
may be stupid, if it sees fit; it sometimes allows itself this luxury;
then the universe is stupid in company with it; then Paris awakes, rubs
its eyes, says: “How stupid I am!” and bursts out laughing in the face
of the human race. What a marvel is such a city! it is a strange thing
that this grandioseness and this burlesque should be amicable
neighbors, that all this majesty should not be thrown into disorder by
all this parody, and that the same mouth can to-day blow into the trump
of the Judgment Day, and to-morrow into the reed-flute! Paris has a
sovereign joviality. Its gayety is of the thunder and its farce holds a
sceptre.
Its tempest sometimes proceeds from a grimace. Its explosions, its
days, its masterpieces, its prodigies, its epics, go forth to the
bounds of the universe, and so also do its cock-and-bull stories. Its
laugh is the mouth of a volcano which spatters the whole earth. Its
jests are sparks. It imposes its caricatures as well as its ideal on
people; the highest monuments of human civilization accept its ironies
and lend their eternity to its mischievous pranks. It is superb; it has
a prodigious 14th of July, which delivers the globe; it forces all
nations to take the oath of tennis; its night of the 4th of August
dissolves in three hours a thousand years of feudalism; it makes of its
logic the muscle of unanimous will; it multiplies itself under all
sorts of forms of the sublime; it fills with its light Washington,
Kosciusko, Bolivar, Bozzaris, Riego, Bem, Manin, Lopez, John Brown,
Garibaldi; it is everywhere where the future is being lighted up, at
Boston in 1779, at the Isle de Léon in 1820, at Pesth in 1848, at
Palermo in 1860, it whispers the mighty countersign: Liberty, in the
ear of the American abolitionists grouped about the boat at Harper’s
Ferry, and in the ear of the patriots of Ancona assembled in the
shadow, to the Archi before the Gozzi inn on the seashore; it creates
Canaris; it creates Quiroga; it creates Pisacane; it irradiates the
great on earth; it was while proceeding whither its breath urge them,
that Byron perished at Missolonghi, and that Mazet died at Barcelona;
it is the tribune under the feet of Mirabeau, and a crater under the
feet of Robespierre; its books, its theatre, its art, its science, its
literature, its philosophy, are the manuals of the human race; it has
Pascal, Régnier, Corneille, Descartes, Jean-Jacques: Voltaire for all
moments, Molière for all centuries; it makes its language to be talked
by the universal mouth, and that language becomes the word; it
constructs in all minds the idea of progress, the liberating dogmas
which it forges are for the generations trusty friends, and it is with
the soul of its thinkers and its poets that all heroes of all nations
have been made since 1789; this does not prevent vagabondism, and that
enormous genius which is called Paris, while transfiguring the world by
its light, sketches in charcoal Bouginier’s nose on the wall of the
temple of Theseus and writes _Credeville the thief_ on the Pyramids.
Paris is always showing its teeth; when it is not scolding it is
laughing.
Such is Paris. The smoke of its roofs forms the ideas of the universe.
A heap of mud and stone, if you will, but, above all, a moral being. It
is more than great, it is immense. Why? Because it is daring.
To dare; that is the price of progress.
All sublime conquests are, more or less, the prizes of daring. In order
that the Revolution should take place, it does not suffice that
Montesquieu should foresee it, that Diderot should preach it, that
Beaumarchais should announce it, that Condorcet should calculate it,
that Arouet should prepare it, that Rousseau should premeditate it; it
is necessary that Danton should dare it.
The cry: _Audacity! _ is a _Fiat lux_. It is necessary, for the sake of
the forward march of the human race, that there should be proud lessons
of courage permanently on the heights. Daring deeds dazzle history and
are one of man’s great sources of light. The dawn dares when it rises.
To attempt, to brave, to persist, to persevere, to be faithful to one’s
self, to grasp fate bodily, to astound catastrophe by the small amount
of fear that it occasions us, now to affront unjust power, again to
insult drunken victory, to hold one’s position, to stand one’s ground;
that is the example which nations need, that is the light which
electrifies them. The same formidable lightning proceeds from the torch
of Prometheus to Cambronne’s short pipe.
