With love, Victor Hugo

I finished reading Victor Hugo’s novel, The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye Witness this afternoon. It’s comprehensive. The French Revolution was horrific, but it doesn’t make America’s War Between the States look exactly humanitarian either. It was a tense read for me. Hugo, however, does articulate some mollifying humanitarian principles.

The star possesses no anger; the dawn bears no malice. Light is satisfied in being light. Light is everything; the human race has no other love.

France knows herself beloved because she is good, and the greatest of all powers is to be loved. (italics mine)

The French Revolution is for all the world. It is a battle perpetually waged for Right, and perpetually gained for Truth. Right is the innermost part of man; Truth is the innermost part of God.