Lagrange, it is said, fired the pistol in the Boulevard des Capucines,
fatal spark that heated the passions of the people and caused the
conflagration of February. He is styled: Political prisoner and
Representative of the people.
Lagrange has a grey moustache, a grey beard and long grey hair. He is
overflowing with soured generosity, charitable violence and a sort of
chivalrous demagogy; there is a love in his heart with which he stirs
up hatred; he is tall, thin, young looking at a distance, old when seen
nearer, wrinkled, bewildered, hoarse, flurried, wan, has a wild look in
his eyes and gesticulates; he is the Don Quixote of the Mountain. He,
also, tilts at windmills; that is to say, at credit, order, peace,
commerce, industry,--all the machinery that turns out bread. With this,
a lack of ideas; continual jumps from justice to insanity and from
cordiality to threats. He proclaims, acclaims, reclaims and declaims.
He is one of those men who are never taken seriously, but who sometimes
have to be taken tragically.