Passing Through the Place Louis XV, Poem by Victor Hugo

Poem by Victor Hugo Collection Les Rayons et les OmbresPeriod 19th century

XXV

PASSING THROUGH THE PLACE LOUIS XV ON A DAY OF PUBLIC CELEBRATION

— Come now, she said, again! why this bowed brow?
Dreamer, into your well you have fallen once more!
What good is it to come to a feast to dream?
I told her, while she tilted her head,
And her charming arm leaned on my arm:
— Yes, it is in this square where our restless age
Placed a stone to hide an idea,
It is here indeed that one day flooded with sun,
The great nation in the great city
Came to see pass in pomp a gentle beauty!
Angel for whom one dreamed of folded wings!
Virgin still the day before, of young brides
Having the astonishment and fresh pallor,
Who, queen and woman, star at the same time as flower,
United, to charm this moved crowd,
The sweet name of Antoinette to the beautiful name of Marie!

Her prince followed her, they smiled at each other,
And all seeing her said: How happy he is! —

And I fell silent then, for my heart was dark;
Letting her contemplate the feast with countless sounds,
The river where a hundred decked boats crossed,
The people, the old men resting in the shade,
The schoolboys playing in separate groups,
And the tranquil sun, and, drunk with joy,
The mouths that, covering the orchestra with vague sounds,

Threw out a vapor of confused songs.

I, toward what moves in an eternal shadow,
Had turned back. The soul is a pupil.

— Oh! I thought, strange and superhuman power
Of the one who holds us palpitating in his hand!
O will of heaven! abyss where the eye drowns!
Gulf where since Adam the human race swirls!
How you take us and cast us back!
How you make sport of our prosperities!
On your sand, O God, our granite melts!
Oh! how man is plunged into a deep night!
How everything he does, alas! in completing itself
Crashes down upon him! and how often it happens
That at the hour when we dream of a supreme future,
Fate laughs at us, and that, under our very steps,
In this earth where nothing seems dug out,
Something horrible is already deposited!
Louis sixteen, on the day of his royal wedding,
Already had his foot on the fatal square
Where, slowly formed by the breath of the Most High,
Like a seed in the soil, his scaffold was germinating!

Victor Hugo

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