Page:Rolland - Two Plays of the French Revolution.djvu/168

162 with word and deed, put weapons into the hands of the enemy.

weapons have I given the enemy? I have defended the most sacred things in the world: fraternity, holy equality—the heart and soul of Republican maxims, the res sacra miser; respect for misery, which is commanded by our sublime Constitution. I have made men love liberty. I wished to light up the eyes of all peoples with the radiant image of happiness.

! There is the fatal word with which you draw to you every form of selfishness and covetousness. Who does not wish for happiness? We are not offering the happiness of Persepolis to the people, but the happiness of Sparta. Happiness is virtue. But you have abused the meaning, and awakened in the minds of cowards a desire for that criminal happiness, which consists in forgetting others, and in enjoying what is unnecessary. A shameful conception! It would soon extinguish the sacred flame of the Revolution! Let France learn to suffer, let her be happy in suffering for the cause of freedom, in sacrificing her comforts, her peace, her affections, for the happiness of the whole world!

[beginning politely but airily, and at the end becoming clear, forceful, and decisive, as I listen to you, I am reminded of a passage from Plato: When I listen to you,' said the good general Laches, 'when I listen to a man who speaks well of virtue, a man who is a real man of the people, worthy of what he speaks of, I experience an ineffable