Alas! we cannot hide it from ourselves, that the present hour, worthy
as it is of admiration and respect, has still some mournful aspects;
there are still shadows upon the horizon; the tragedy of the peoples
is not finished; war, wicked war, is still there, and it has the
audacity to lift its head in the midst of this august festival of
peace. Princes, for two years past, obstinately adhere to a fatal
misunderstanding; their discord forms an obstacle to our concord, and
they are ill-inspired to condemn us to the statement of such a contrast.
Let this contrast lead us back to Voltaire. In the presence of menacing
possibilities, let us be more pacific than ever. Let us turn toward
that great death, toward that great life, toward that great spirit. Let
us bend before the venerated tombs. Let us take counsel of him whose
life, useful to men, was extinguished a hundred years ago, but whose
work is immortal. Let us take counsel of the other powerful thinkers,
the auxiliaries of this glorious Voltaire, of Jean Jacques, of Diderot,
of Montesquieu. Let us give the word to those great voices. Let us stop
the effusion of human blood. Enough! enough! despots. Ah! barbarism
persists; very well, let civilization be indignant. Let the eighteenth
century come to the help of the nineteenth. The philosophers, our
predecessors, are the apostles of the true; let us invoke those
illustrious shades; let them, before monarchies meditate wars,
proclaim the right of man to life, the right of conscience to liberty,
the sovereignty of reason, the holiness of labor, the beneficence of
peace; and since night issues from the thrones, let the light come from
the tombs. [Acclamations unanimous and prolonged. From all sides bursts
the cry: “Vive Victor Hugo.”]