In the Name of the Revolution, the Double Barricade

June, 1848, was, let us hasten to say, a thing apart, and almost impossible to class in the philosophy of history. . . . But, at bottom, what was June, 1848? A revolt of the people against itself . . .; let us then be permitted for a moment to arrest the reader’s attention upon the two absolutely unique barricades of which we have just spoken . . . these two frightful masterpieces of civil war. . . . The barricade Saint Antoine was monstrous. . . . Ruin. You might say: who built that? You might also say: who destroyed that?. . . . It was great and it was little. It was the bottomless pit parodied upon the spot by chaos come again. . . . This barricade was furious. . . . It was huge and living; and, as from the back of an electric beast, there came from it a crackling of thunders. The spirit of revolution covered with its cloud that summit whereon growled this voice of the people which is like the voice of God; a strange majesty emanated from that titanic hodful of refuse. It was a garbage heap and it was Sinaï.