478
PARTISAN REVIEW
away their privileges, cannot
be
accounted for entirely by the self–
interest of that class.
Certain experiences have taught our century that revolutions are
also
revolutionary. The Republic, a reality because it was threatened,
was in other respects a world outside the grip of destiny: one in
which "men shall have lived for a day-as their hearts dictated."
As
their dreams dictated above all: in that trance which the legend
implies, and which none of the avowed aims of thCi Republic-hap–
piness or justice-could explain. The revolutionary exaltation subsists
on the future or on the unknown, and
it
wears off. For Saint-Just
it was the condition of
those who aim at glory,
and look on their
present as the imagination views the legendary past.
As
for the fu–
ture, he thought it would follow from the institutions he planned;
perhaps even more from glory, as
if
glory held a promise greater
than that of institutions, as if a heroic world would necessarily beget
a world delivered. How many times this man obsessed with greatness
acted as though he were staking
his
all! His ability to make men live
heroically, to transform defeated troops into the soldiers of the Year
II, he put at the service of the Republic
which had no time to be
born.
His ruthless greatness seemed to be a pledge of the merciful
greatness of that Republic, guillotined with him. But it was not a
Sparta of twenty million souls, we feel, that perished with him. He
often talked of peace, of neutrality, like Napoleon. But he knew his
Republic was contagiot1s; the kings knew
it
too, and Thermidor only
delayed the Napoleonic epic to come. True, he did not have the
Emperor's military genius. Neither did Mohammed or Stalin. The
Revolution, driven out by the husband of Marie Louise, prays like
a poor faithful beggar woman at the grave of the murderer of Marie
Antoinette, and one rough draft of the poem of France tells the
story of the army of Sambre-et-Meuse which became
La
Grande
Armee.
For the Republic of Saint-Just foreshadowed, not the perfect
state, but a tide of conquest like that of Islam.
Some of his magic comes from his powers of expression, which
were not, properly speaking, literary. His speeches arid notes as a
whole are addressed only to the specialists; his genius is manifested
in
isolated phrases to which his acts gave a meaning that resounds
through the centuries because it is so impersonal, it seems to be the
very language of history. He wanted to live in history as the saints
