After describing the place where our merry band of eight lands for dinner Hugo slides into this aside about the way that the Prefect of Police had misread the current situation in Paris among the working population. Essentially he says they are not to be feared. They are small, they are weak, they are not dangerous. He goes as far as to call them “an easy-going riff-raff”.
Hugo says this read was wrong. It’s worth quoting part of what he said directly. Speaking of this small working class man of Paris he says:
Beware of him! His hair rising in anger assumes an epic quality, his shirt becomes a Grecian mantle, the first street uprising becomes a Caudine Fork. When the tocsin sounds the dweller in the back streets gains in stature, the little man assumes a terrible look and the breath from his narrow chest becomes a gale to change the skyline of the Alps. It is thanks to the little man of Paris that the revolution, inspiring the armies, conquered Europe. He delights in song. Suit his song to his nature and you will understand. With just the ‘Carmagnole’ to sing he will only overthrow Louis XVI; but give him the ‘Marseillaise’ and he will liberate the world.
The Carmagnole was a revolutionary song very focused on the specifics of the French Revolution and the particulars of overthrowing Marie Antoinette and Louis the XVI. The Marseillaise on the other hand was a true call to arms, a call to war, and in the wake of the French revolution it became the French national anthem. By 1817 (the year we currently occupy in the novel) it had lost that status and was once again an anthem for revolutionaries.
Maybe we need some new songs for a revolution.