Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

friends had long done him the honour to believe that he had entered the
republican ranks only to observe the more closely the flaws in the
republican armour, and to smite it the more surely, when the day should
come, for the sacred cause of the king. These lurkings in ambush for the
convenient hour to strike the enemy a death-blow in the back are
attributes to loyalty. Such a line of conduct had been expected of Lord
Clancharlie, so strong was the wish to judge him favourably; but, in the
face of his strange persistence in republicanism, people were obliged to
lower their estimate. Evidently Lord Clancharlie was confirmed in his
convictions--that is to say, an idiot!
The explanation given by the indulgent, wavered between puerile
stubbornness and senile obstinacy.
The severe and the just went further; they blighted the name of the
renegade. Folly has its rights, but it has also its limits. A man may be
a brute, but he has no right to be a rebel. And, after all, what was
this Lord Clancharlie? A deserter. He had fled his camp, the
aristocracy, for that of the enemy, the people. This faithful man was a
traitor. It is true that he was a traitor to the stronger, and faithful
to the weaker; it is true that the camp repudiated by him was the
conquering camp, and the camp adopted by him, the conquered; it is true
that by his treason he lost everything--his political privileges and his
domestic hearth, his title and his country. He gained nothing but
ridicule, he attained no benefit but exile. But what does all this
prove?--that he was a fool. Granted.
Plainly a dupe and traitor in one. Let a man be as great a fool as he
likes, so that he does not set a bad example. Fools need only be civil,
and in consideration thereof they may aim at being the basis of
monarchies. The narrowness of Clancharlie's mind was incomprehensible.
His eyes were still dazzled by the phantasmagoria of the revolution. He
had allowed himself to be taken in by the republic--yes; and cast out.
He was an affront to his country. The attitude he assumed was downright
felony. Absence was an insult. He held aloof from the public joy as from
the plague. In his voluntary banishment he found some indescribable
refuge from the national rejoicing. He treated loyalty as a contagion;
over the widespread gladness at the revival of the monarchy, denounced
by him as a lazaretto, he was the black flag. What! could he look thus
askance at order reconstituted, a nation exalted, and a religion
restored? Over such serenity why cast his shadow? Take umbrage at
England's contentment! Must he be the one blot in the clear blue sky! Be
as a threat! Protest against a nation's will! refuse his Yes to the
universal consent! It would be disgusting, if it were not the part of a
fool. Clancharlie could not have taken into account the fact that it did
not matter if one had taken the wrong turn with Cromwell, as long as one
found one's way back into the right path with Monk.
Take Monk's case. He commands the republican army. Charles II., having
been informed of his honesty, writes to him. Monk, who combines virtue
with tact, dissimulates at first, then suddenly at the head of his
troops dissolves the rebel parliament, and re-establishes the king on
the throne. Monk is created Duke of Albemarle, has the honour of having
saved society, becomes very rich, sheds a glory over his own time, is
created Knight of the Garter, and has the prospect of being buried in
Westminster Abbey. Such glory is the reward of British fidelity!