CHAPTER I

THE CONSTITUTION

A roll of the drums; clowns, attention!

THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC,

“Considering that ­all the restrictive laws on the liberty of the press having been repealed, all the laws against hand-bills and posting-bills having been abolished, the right of public assemblage having been fully re-established, all the unconstitutional laws, including martial law, having been suppressed, every citizen being empowered to say what he likes through every medium of publicity, whether newspaper, placard, or electoral meeting, all solemn engagements, especially the oath of the 20th of December, 1848, having been scrupulously kept, all facts having been investigated, all questions propounded and discussed, all candidacies publicly defeated, without the possibility of alleging that the slightest violence had been exercised against the meanest citizen, ­in one word, in the fullest enjoyment of liberty.  “The sovereign people being interrogated on this question: ­

“’Do the French people mean to place themselves, tied neck and
heels, at the discretion of M. Louis Bonaparte?’

“Have replied YES by 7,500,000 votes. (Interruption by the
author: ­We shall have more to say of these 7,500,000 votes.)

“PROMULGATES

“THE CONSTITUTION IN MANNER FOLLOWING, THAT IS TO SAY: 

“Article 1.  The Constitution recognises, confirms, and guarantees
the great principles proclaimed in 1789, which are the foundation
of the public law of the French people.

“Article 2 and following.  The platform and the press, which impeded the march of progress, are superseded by the police and the censorship, and by the secret deliberations of the Senate, the Corps Legislatif and the Council of State.

“Article last.  The thing commonly called human intelligence is
suppressed.

“Done at the Palace of the Tuileries January 14, 1852.

“LOUIS NAPOLEON.

“Witnessed and sealed with the great seal. 
“E.  ROUHER.
“Keeper of the Seals and Minister of Justice.”

This Constitution, which loudly proclaims and confirms the Revolution of 1789 in its principles and its consequences, and which merely abolishes liberty, was evidently and happily inspired in M. Bonaparte, by an old provincial play-bill which it is well to recall at this time: 

THIS DAY,

The Grand Representation

OF

LA DAME BLANCHE,

AN OPERA IN THREE ACTS.

Note.  The music, which would embarrass the progress of the plot,
will be replaced by lively and piquant dialogue.

CHAPTER II

THE SENATE

This lively and piquant dialogue is carried on by the Council of State, the Corps Legislatif and the Senate.

Is there a Senate then?  Certainly.  This “great body,” this “balancing power,” this “supreme moderator,” is in truth the principal glory of the Constitution.  Let us consider it for a moment.

The Senate!  It is a senate.  But of what Senate are you speaking?  Is it the Senate whose duty it was to deliberate on the description of sauce with which the Emperor should eat his turbot?  Is it the Senate of which Napoleon thus spoke on April 5, 1814:  “A sign was an order for the Senate, and it always did more than was required of it?” Is it the Senate of which Napoleon said in 1805:  “The poltroons were afraid of displeasing me?" Is it the Senate which drew from Tiberius almost the same exclamation:  “The base wretches! greater slaves than we require them to be!” Is it the Senate which caused Charles XII to say:  “Send my boot to Stockholm.” ­“For what purpose, Sire?” demanded his minister. ­“To preside over the Senate,” was the reply.

But let us not trifle.  This year they are eighty; they will be one hundred and fifty next year.  They monopolise to themselves, in full plenitude, fourteen articles of the Constitution, from Article 19 to Article 33.  They are “guardians of the public liberties;” their functions are gratuitous by Article 22; consequently, they have from fifteen to thirty thousand francs per annum.  They have the peculiar privilege of receiving their salary, and the prerogative of “not opposing” the promulgation of the laws.  They are all illustrious personages." This is not an “abortive Senate," like that of Napoleon the uncle; this is a genuine Senate; the marshals are members, and the cardinals and M. Leboeuf.

“What is your position in the country?” some one asks the Senate.  “We are charged with the preservation of public liberty.” ­“What is your business in this city?” Pierrot demands of Harlequin. ­“My business,” replies Harlequin, “is to curry-comb the bronze horse.”

“We know what is meant by esprit-de-corps:  this spirit will urge the Senate by every possible means to augment its power.  It will destroy the Corps Legislatif, if it can; and if occasion offers it will compound with the Bourbons.”

Who said this?  The First Consul.  Where?  At the Tuileries, in April, 1804.

“Without title or authority, and in violation of every principle, it has surrendered the country and consummated its ruin.  It has been the plaything of eminent intriguers; I know of no body which ought to appear in history with greater ignominy than the Senate.”

Who said this?  The Emperor.  Where?  At St. Helena.

There is actually then a senate in the “Constitution of January 14.”  But, candidly speaking, this is a mistake; for now that public hygiene has made some progress, we are accustomed to see the public highway better kept.  After the Senate of the Empire, we thought that no more senates would be mixed up with Constitutions.

CHAPTER III

THE COUNCIL OF STATE AND THE CORPS LEGISLATIF

There is also a Council of State and a Corps Legislatif:  the former joyous, well paid, plump, rosy, fat, and fresh, with a sharp eye, a red ear, a voluble tongue, a sword by its side, a belly, and embroidered in gold; the Corps Legislatif, pale, meagre, sad, and embroidered in silver.  The Council of State comes and goes, enters and exits, returns, rules, disposes, decides, settles, and decrees, and sees Louis Napoleon face to face.  The Corps Legislatif, on the contrary, walks on tiptoe, fumbles with its hat, puts its finger to its lips, smiles humbly, sits on the corner of its chair, and speaks only when questioned.  Its words being naturally obscene, the public journals are forbidden to make the slightest allusion to them.  The Corps Legislatif passes laws and votes taxes by Article 39; and when, fancying it has occasion for some instruction, some detail, some figures, or some explanation, it presents itself, hat in hand, at the door of the departments to consult the ministers, the usher receives it in the antechamber, and with a roar of laughter, gives it a fillip on the nose.  Such are the duties of the Corps Legislatif.

Let us state, however, that this melancholy position began, in June, 1852, to extort some sighs from the sorrowful personages who form a portion of the concern.  The report of the commission on the budget will remain in the memory of men, as one of the most heart-rending masterpieces of the plaintive style.  Let us repeat those gentle accents: ­

“Formerly, as you know, the necessary communications in such cases were carried on directly between the commissioners and the ministers.  It was to the latter that they addressed themselves to obtain the documents indispensable to the discussion of affairs; and the ministers even came personally, with the heads of their several departments, to give verbal explanations, frequently sufficient to preclude the necessity of further discussion; and the resolutions formed by the commission on the budget after they had heard them, were submitted direct to the Chamber.

“But now we can have no communication with the government except through the medium of the Council of State, which, being the confidant and the organ of its own ideas, has alone the right of transmitting to the Corps Legislatif the documents which, in its turn, it receives from the ministers.

“In a word, for written reports, as well as for verbal communications, the government commissioners have superseded the ministers, with whom, however, they must have a preliminary understanding.

“With respect to the modifications which the commission might wish to propose, whether by the adoption of amendments presented by the deputies, or from its own examination of the budget, they must, before you are called upon to consider them, be sent to the Council of State, there to undergo discussion.

“There (it is impossible not to notice it) those modifications have no interpreters, no official defenders.

“This mode of procedure appears to be derived from the Constitution itself; and if we speak of the matter now, it is solely to prove to you that it must occasion delays in accomplishing the task imposed upon the commission on the budget."

Reproach was never so mildly uttered; it is impossible to receive more chastely and more gracefully, what M. Bonaparte, in his autocratic style, calls “guarantees of calmness," but what Moliere, with the license of a great writer, denominates “kicks."

Thus, in the shop where laws and budgets are manufactured, there is a master of the house, the Council of State, and a servant, the Corps Legislatif.  According to the terms of the “Constitution,” who is it that appoints the master of the house?  M. Bonaparte.  Who appoints the servant?  The nation.  That is as it should be.

CHAPTER IV

THE FINANCES

Let it be observed that, under the shadow of these “wise institutions,” and thanks to the coup d’etat, which, as is well known, has re-established order, the finances, the public safety, and public prosperity, the budget, by the admission of M. Gouin, shows a deficit of 123,000,000 francs.

As for commercial activity since the coup d’etat, as for the prosperity of trade, as for the revival of business, in order to appreciate them it is enough to reject words and have recourse to figures.  On this point, the following statement is official and decisive:  the discounts of the Bank of France produced during the first half of 1852, only 589,502fc. at the central bank; while the profits of the branch establishments have risen only to 651,108fc.  This appears from the half-yearly report of the Bank itself.

M. Bonaparte, however, does not trouble himself with taxation.  Some fine morning he wakes and yawns, rubs his eyes, takes his pen and decrees ­what?  The budget.  Achmet III. was once desirous of levying taxes according to his own fancy. ­“Invincible lord,” said his Vizier to him, “your subjects cannot be taxed beyond what is prescribed by the law and the prophet.”

This identical M. Bonaparte, when at Ham, wrote as follows: ­

“If the sums levied each year on the inhabitants generally are employed for unproductive purposes, such as creating useless places, raising sterile monuments, and maintaining in the midst of profound peace a more expensive army than that which conquered at Austerlitz, taxation becomes in such case an overwhelming burden; it exhausts the country, it takes without any return."

With reference to this word budget an observation occurs to us.  In this present year 1852, the bishops and the judges of the Cour de Cassation, have 50 francs per diem; the archbishops, the councillors of state, the first presidents, and the procureurs-general, have each 69 francs per diem; the senators, the prefects, and the generals of division receive 83 francs each per diem; the presidents of sections of the Council of State 222 francs per diem; the ministers 252 francs per diem; Monseigneur the Prince-President, comprising of course, in his salary, the sum for maintenance of the royal residences, receives per diem 44,444 francs, 44 centimes.  The revolution of the 2nd of December was made against the Twenty-five Francs!

CHAPTER V

THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS

We have now seen what the legislature is, what the administration, and what the budget.

And the courts!  What was formerly called the Cour de Cassation is no longer anything more than a record office of councils of war.  A soldier steps out of the guard-house and writes in the margin of the book of the law, I will, or I will not.  In all directions the corporal gives the order, and the magistrate countersigns it.  Come! tuck up your gowns and begone, or else ­Hence these abominable trials, sentences, and condemnations.  What a sorry spectacle is that troop of judges, with hanging heads and bent backs, driven with the butt end of the musket into baseness and iniquity!

And the liberty of the press!  What shall we say of it?  Is it not a mockery merely to pronounce the words?  That free press, the honour of French intellect, a light thrown from all points at once upon all questions, the perpetual sentinel of the nation ­where is it?  What has M. Bonaparte done with it?  It is where the public platform is.  Twenty newspapers extinguished in Paris, eighty in the departments, ­one hundred newspapers suppressed:  that is to say, looking only to the material side of the question, innumerable families deprived of bread; that is to say, understand it, citizens, one hundred houses confiscated, one hundred farms taken from their proprietors, one hundred interest coupons stolen from the public funds.  Marvellous identity of principles:  freedom suppressed is property destroyed.  Let the selfish idiots who applaud the coup d’etat reflect upon this.

Instead of a law concerning the press a decree has been laid upon it; a fetfa, a firman, dated from the imperial stirrup:  the regime of admonition.  This regime is well known.  Its working is witnessed daily.  Such men were requisite to invent such a thing.  Despotism has never shown itself more grossly insolent and stupid than in this species of censorship of the morrow, which precedes and announces the suppression, and which administers the bastinado to a paper before killing it entirely.  The folly of such a government corrects and tempers its atrocity.  The whole of the decree concerning the press may be summed up in one line:  “I permit you to speak, but I require you to be silent.”  Who reigns, in God’s name?  Is it Tiberius?  Is it Schahabaham?  Three-fourths of the republican journalists transported or proscribed, the remainder hunted down by mixed commissions, dispersed, wandering, in hiding.  Here and there, in four or five of the surviving journals, in four or five which are independent but closely watched, over whose heads is suspended the club of Maupas, some fifteen or twenty writers, courageous, serious, pure, honest, and noble-hearted, who write, as it were, with a chain round their necks, and a ball on their feet; talent between two sentinels, independence gagged, honesty under surveillance, and Veuillot exclaiming:  “I am free!”

CHAPTER VI

NOVELTIES IN RESPECT TO WHAT IS LAWFUL

The press enjoys the privilege of being censored, of being admonished, of being suspended, of being suppressed; it has even the privilege of being tried.  Tried!  By whom?  By the courts.  What courts?  The police courts.  And what about that excellent trial by jury?  Progress:  it is outstripped.  The jury is far behind us, and we return to the government judges.  “Repression is more rapid and more efficacious,” as Maitre Rouher says.  And then ’tis so much better.  Call the causes:  correctional police, sixth chamber; first cause, one Roumage, swindler; second cause, one Lamennais, writer.  This has a good effect, and accustoms the citizens to talk without distinction of writers and swindlers.  That, certainly, is an advantage; but in a practical point of view, with reference to “repression,” is the government quite sure of what it has done on that head?  Is it quite sure that the sixth chamber will answer better than the excellent assize court of Paris, for instance, which had for president such abject creatures as Partarrieu-Lafosse, and for advocates at its bar, such base wretches as Suin, and such dull orators as Mongis?  Can it reasonably expect that the police judges will be still more base and more contemptible than they?  Will those judges, salaried as they are, work better than that jury-squad, who had the department prosecutor for corporal, and who pronounced their judgments and gesticulated their verdicts with the precision of a charge in double quick time, so that the prefect of police, Carlier, good-humouredly observed to a celebrated advocate, M. Desm ­:  “The jury! what a stupid institution!  When not forced to it they never condemn, but when forced they never acquit.” Let us weep for that worthy jury which was made by Carlier and unmade by Rouher.

This government feels that it is hideous.  It wants no portrait; above all it wants no mirror.  Like the osprey it takes refuge in darkness, and it would die if once seen.  Now it wishes to endure.  It does not propose to be talked about; it does not propose to be described.  It has imposed silence on the press of France; we have seen in what manner.  But to silence the press in France was only half-success.  It must also be silenced in foreign countries.  Two prosecutions were attempted in Belgium, against the Bulletin Francais and against La Nation.  They were acquitted by an honest Belgian jury.  This was annoying.  What was to be done?  The Belgian journals were attacked through their pockets.  “You have subscribers in France,” they were told; “but if you ‘discuss’ us, you shall be kept out.  If you wish to come in, make yourselves agreeable.”  An attempt was made to frighten the English journals.  “If you ‘discuss’ us” ­decidedly they do not wish to be discussed ­“we shall drive your correspondents out of France.”  The English press roared with laughter.  But this is not all.  There are French writers outside of France:  they are proscribed, that is to say they are free.  Suppose those fellows should speak?  Suppose those demagogues should write?  They are very capable of doing both; and we must prevent them.  But how are we to do it?  To gag people at a distance is not so easy a matter:  M. Bonaparte’s arm is not long enough for that.  Let us try, however; we will prosecute them in the countries where they have taken refuge.  Very good:  the juries of free countries will understand that these exiles represent justice, and that the Bonapartist government personifies iniquity.  These juries will follow the example of the Belgian jury and acquit.  The friendly governments will then be solicited to expel these refugees, to banish these exiles.  Very good:  the exiles will go elsewhere; they will always find some corner of the earth open to them where they can speak.  How then are they to be got at?  Rouher and Baroche clubbed their wits together, and between them they hit upon this expedient:  to patch up a law dealing with crimes committed by Frenchmen in foreign countries, and to slip into it “crimes of the press.”  The Council of State sanctioned this, and the Corps Legislatif did not oppose it, and it is now the law of the land.  If we speak outside of France, we shall be condemned for the offence in France; imprisonment (in future, if caught), fines and confiscations.  Again, very good.  The book I am now writing will, therefore, be tried in France, and its author duly convicted; this I expect, and I confine myself to apprising all those quidams calling themselves magistrates, who, in black and red gown, shall concoct the thing that, sentence to any fine whatever being well and duly pronounced against me, nothing will equal my disdain for the judgment, but my contempt for the judges.  This is my defence.

CHAPTER VII

THE ADHERENTS

Who are they that flock round the establishment?  As we have said, the gorge rises at thought of them.

Ah! these rulers of the day, ­we who are now proscribed remember them when they were representatives of the people, only twelve months ago, running hither and thither in the lobbies of the Assembly, their heads high, and with a show of independence, and the air and manner of men who belonged to themselves.  What magnificence! and how proud they were!  How they placed their hands on their hearts while they shouted “Vive la République!” And if some “Terrorist,” some “Montagnard,” or some “red republican,” happened to allude from the tribune to the planned coup d’etat and the projected Empire, how they vociferated at him:  “You are a calumniator!” How they shrugged their shoulders at the word “Senate!” ­“The Empire to-day” cried one, “would be blood and slime; you slander us, we shall never be implicated in such a matter.”  Another affirmed that he consented to be one of the President’s ministers solely to devote himself to the defence of the Constitution and the laws; a third glorified the tribune as the palladium of the country; a fourth recalled the oath of Louis Bonaparte, exclaiming:  “Do you doubt that he is an honest man?” These last ­there were two of them ­went the length of voting for and signing his deposition, on the 2nd of December, at the mayoralty of the Tenth Arrondissement; another sent a note on the 4th of December to the writer of these lines, to “felicitate him on having dictated the proclamation of the Left, by which Louis Bonaparte was outlawed.”  And now, behold them, Senators, Councillors of State, ministers, belaced, betagged, bedizened with gold!  Base wretches!  Before you embroider your sleeves, wash your hands!

M. Q.-B. paid a visit to M. O.-B. and said to him:  “Can you conceive the assurance of this Bonaparte? he has had the presumption to offer me the place of Master of Requests!” ­“You refused it?” ­“Certainly.” ­The next day, being offered the place of Councillor of State, salary twenty-five thousand francs, our indignant Master of Requests becomes a grateful Councillor of State.  M. Q.-B. accepts.

One class of men rallied en masse:  the fools!  They comprise the sound part of the Corps Legislatif.  It was to them that the head of the State addressed this little flattery: ­“The first test of the Constitution, entirely of French origin, must have convinced you that we possess the qualities of a strong and a free government.  We are in earnest, discussion is free, and the vote of taxation decisive.  France possesses a government animated by faith and by love of the right, which is based upon the people, the source of all power; upon the army, the source of all strength; and upon religion, the source of all justice.  Accept the assurance of my regard.”  These worthy dupes, we know them also; we have seen a goodly number of them on the benches of the majority in the Legislative Assembly.  Their chiefs, skilful manipulators, had succeeded in terrifying them, ­a certain method of leading them wherever they thought proper.  These chiefs, unable any longer to employ usefully those old bugbears, the terms “Jacobin” and “sans-culotte,” decidedly too hackneyed, had furbished up the word “demagogue.”  These ringleaders, trained to all sorts of schemes and manoeuvres, exploited successfully the word “Mountain,” and agitated to good purpose that startling and glorious souvenir.  With these few letters of the alphabet formed into syllables and suitably accented, ­Demagogues, Montagnards, Partitioners, Communists, Red Republicans, ­they made wildfires dance before the eyes of the simple.  They had found the method of perverting the brains of their colleagues, who were so ingenuous as to swallow them whole, so to speak, with a sort of dictionary, wherein every expression made use of by the democratic writers and orators was readily translated.  For humanity read ferocity; for universal good read subversion; for Republic read Terrorism; for Socialism read Pillage; for Fraternity, read Massacre; for the Gospel, read Death to the Rich.  So that, when an orator of the Left exclaimed, for instance:  “We rush for the suppression of war, and the abolition of the death penalty,” a crowd of poor souls on the Right distinctly understood:  “We wish to put everything to fire and sword;” and in a fury shook their fists at the orator.  After such speeches, in which there had been a question only of liberty, of universal peace, of prosperity arising from labour, of concord, and of progress, the representatives of that category which we have designated at the head of this paragraph, were seen to rise, pale as death; they were not sure that they were not already guillotined, and went to look for their hats to see whether they still had heads.

These poor frightened creatures did not haggle over their adhesion to the 2nd of December.  The expression, “Louis Napoleon has saved society,” was invented especially for them.

And those eternal prefects, those eternal mayors, those eternal magistrates, those eternal sheriffs, those eternal complimenters of the rising sun, or of the lighted lamp, who, on the day after success, flock to the conqueror, to the triumpher, to the master, to his Majesty Napoleon the Great, to his Majesty Louis XVIII, to his Majesty Alexander I, to his Majesty Charles X, to his Majesty Louis Philippe, to Citizen Lamartine, to Citizen Cavaignac, to Monseigneur the Prince-President, kneeling, smiling, expansive, bearing upon salvers the keys of their towns, and on their faces the keys of their consciences!

But imbéciles (’tis an old story) have always made a part of all institutions, and are almost an institution of themselves; and as for the prefects and magistrates, as for these adorers of every new regime, insolent with, fortune and rapidity, they abound at all times.  Let us do justice to the regime of December; it can boast not only of such partisans as these, but it has creatures and adherents peculiar to itself; it has produced an altogether new race of notabilities.

Nations are never conscious of all the riches they possess in the matter of knaves.  Overturnings and subversions of this description are necessary to bring them to light.  Then the nations wonder at what issues from the dust.  It is splendid to contemplate.  One whose shoes and clothes and reputation were of a sort to attract all the dogs of Europe in full cry, comes forth an ambassador.  Another, who had a glimpse of Bicetre and La Roquette, awakes a general, and Grand Eagle of the Legion of Honour.  Every adventurer assumes an official costume, furnishes himself with a good pillow stuffed with bank-notes, takes a sheet of white paper, and writes thereon:  “End of my adventures.” ­“You know So-and-So?” ­“Yes, is he at the galleys?” ­“No, he’s a minister.”

CHAPTER VIII

MENS AGITAT MOLEM

In the centre is the man ­the man we have described; the man of Punic faith, the fatal man, attacking the civilisation to arrive at power; seeking, elsewhere than amongst the true people, one knows not what ferocious popularity; cultivating the still uncivilized qualities of the peasant and the soldier, endeavouring to succeed by appealing to gross selfishness, to brutal passions, to newly awakened desires, to excited appetites; something like a Prince Marat, with nearly the same object, which in Marat was grand, and in Louis Bonaparte is little; the man who kills, who transports, who banishes, who expels, who proscribes, who despoils; this man with harassed gesture and glassy eye, who walks with distracted air amid the horrible things he does, like a sort of sinister somnambulist.

It has been said of Louis Bonaparte, whether with friendly intent or otherwise, ­for these strange beings have strange flatterers, ­“He is a dictator, he is a despot, nothing more.” ­He is that in our opinion, and he is also something else.

The dictator was a magistrate.  Livy and Cicero call him praetor maximus; Seneca calls him magister populi; what he decreed was looked upon as a fiat from above.  Livy says:  pro numine observatum.  In those times of incomplete civilisation, the rigidity of the ancient laws not having foreseen all cases, his function was to provide for the safety of the people; he was the product of this text:  salus populi suprema lex ésto.  He caused to be carried before him the twenty-four axes, the emblems of his power of life and death.  He was outside the law, and above the law, but he could not touch the law.  The dictatorship was a veil, behind which the law remained intact.  The law was before the dictator and after him; and it resumed its power over him on the cessation of his office.  He was appointed for a very short period ­six months only:  semestris dictatura, says Livy. But as if this enormous power, even when freely conferred by the people, ultimately weighed heavily upon him, like remorse, the dictator generally resigned before the end of his term.  Cincinnatus gave it up at the end of eight days.  The dictator was forbidden to dispose of the public funds without the authority of the Senate, or to go out of Italy.  He could not even ride on horseback without the permission of the people.  He might be a plebeian; Marcius Rutilus, and Publius Philo were dictators.  That magistracy was created for very different objects:  to organize fêtes for saints’ days; to drive a sacred nail into the wall of the Temple of Jupiter; on one occasion to appoint the Senate.  Republican Rome had eighty-eight dictators.  This intermittent institution continued for one hundred and fifty-three years, from the year of Rome 552, to the year 711.  It began with Servilius Geminus, and reached Cæsar, passing over Sylla.  It expired with Cæsar.  The dictatorship was fitted to be repudiated by Cincinnatus, and to be espoused by Cæsar.  Cæsar was five times dictator in the course of five years, from 706 to 711.  This was a dangerous magistracy, and it ended by devouring liberty.

Is M. Bonaparte a dictator?  We see no impropriety in answering yes. Praetor maximus, ­general-in-chief? the colours salute him. Magister populi, ­the master of the people? ask the cannons levelled on the public squares. Pro numine observatum, ­regarded as God? ask M. Troplong.  He has appointed the Senate, he has instituted holidays, he has provided for the “safety of society,” he has driven a sacred nail into the wall of the Pantheon, and he has hung upon this nail his coup d’etat.  The only discrepancy is, that he makes and unmakes the law according to his own fancy, he rides horseback without permission, and as to the six months, he takes a little more time.  Cæsar took five years, he takes double; that is but fair.  Julius Cæsar five, M. Louis Bonaparte ten ­the proportion is well observed.

From the dictator, let us pass to the despot.  This is the other qualification almost accepted by M. Bonaparte.  Let us speak for a while the language of the Lower Empire.  It befits the subject.

The Despotes came after the Basileus.  Among other attributes, he was general of the infantry and of the cavalry ­magister utriusque exercitus.  It was the Emperor Alexis, surnamed the Angel, who created the dignity of despotes.  This officer was below the Emperor, and above the Sebastocrator, or Augustus, and above the Cæsar.

It will be seen that this is somewhat the case with us.  M. Bonaparte is despotes, if we admit, which is not difficult, that Magnan is Cæsar, and that Maupas is Augustus.

Despot and dictator, that is admitted.  But all this great eclat, all this triumphant power, does not prevent little incidents from happening in Paris, like the following, which honest badauds, witnesses of the fact, will tell you, musingly.  Two men were walking in the street, talking of their business or their private affairs.  One of them, referring to some knave or other, of whom he thought he had reason to complain, exclaimed:  “He is a wretch, a swindler, a rascal!” A police agent who heard these last words, cried out:  “Monsieur, you are speaking of the President; I arrest you.”

And now, will M. Bonaparte be Emperor, or will he not?

A pretty question!  He is master, ­he is Cadi, Mufti, Bey, Dey, Sultan, Grand Khan, Grand Lama, Great Mogul, Great Dragon, Cousin to the Sun, Commander of the Faithful, Shah, Czar, Sofi, and Caliph.  Paris is no longer Paris, but Bagdad; with a Giaffar who is called Persigny, and a Scheherazade who is in danger of having her head chopped off every morning, and who is called Le Constitutionnel.  M. Bonaparte may do whatever he likes with property, families, and persons.  If French citizens wish to fathom the depth of the “government” into which they have fallen, they have only to ask themselves a few questions.  Let us see:  magistrate, he tears off your gown, and sends you to prison.  What of it?  Let us see:  Senate, Council of State, Corps Legislatif, he seizes a shovel, and flings you all in a heap in a corner.  What of it?  Landed proprietor, he confiscates your country house and your town house, with courtyards, stables, gardens, and appurtenances.  What of it?  Father, he takes your daughter; brother, he takes your sister; citizen, he takes your wife, by right of might.  What of it?  Wayfarer, your looks displease him, and he blows your brains out with a pistol, and goes home.  What of it?

All these things being done, what would be the result?  Nothing.  “Monseigneur the Prince-President took his customary drive yesterday in the Champs Elysees, in a caleche a la Daumont, drawn by four horses, accompanied by a single aide-de-camp.”  This is what the newspapers will say.

He has effaced from the walls Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity; and he is right.  Frenchmen, alas! you are no longer either free, ­the strait-waistcoat is upon you; or equal, ­the soldier is everything; or brothers, ­for civil war is brewing under this melancholy peace of a state of siege.

Emperor?  Why not?  He has a Maury who is called Sibour; he has a Fontanes, or, if you prefer it, a Faciuntasinos, who is called Fortoul; he has a Laplace who answers to the name of Leverrier, although he did not produce the “Mecanique Celeste.”  He will easily find Esmenards and Luce de Lancivals.  His Pius VII is at Rome, in the cassock of Pius IX.  His green uniform has been seen at Strasburg; his eagle has been seen at Boulogne; his grey riding-coat, did he not wear it at Ham?  Cassock or riding-coat, ’tis all one.  Madame de Stael comes out, of his house.  She wrote “Lelia.”  He smiles on her pending the day when he will exile her.  Do you insist on an archduchess? wait awhile and he will get one. Tu, felix Austria, nube. His Murat is called Saint-Arnaud; his Talleyrand is called Morny; his Duc d’Enghien is called Law.

What does he lack then?  Nothing; a mere trifle; merely Austerlitz and Marengo.

Make the best of it; he is Emperor in petto; one of these mornings he will be so in the sun; nothing more is wanting than a trivial formality, the mere consecration and crowning of his false oath at Notre-Dame.  After that we shall have fine doings.  Expect an imperial spectacle.  Expect caprices, surprises, stupefying, bewildering things, the most unexpected combinations of words, the most fearless cacophony?  Expect Prince Troplong, Duc Maupas, Duc Mimerel, Marquis Leboeuf, Baron Baroche.  Form in line, courtiers; hats off, senators; the stable-door opens, monseigneur the horse is consul.  Gild the oats of his highness Incitatus.

Everything will be swallowed; the public hiatus will be prodigious.  All the enormities will pass away.  The old fly-catchers will disappear and make room for the swallowers of whales.

To our minds the Empire exists from this moment, and without waiting for the interlude of the senatus consultum and the comedy of the plebiscite, we despatch this bulletin to Europe: ­

“The treason of the 2nd of December is delivered of the Empire.

“The mother and child are indisposed.”

CHAPTER IX

OMNIPOTENCE

Let us forget this man’s origin and his 2nd of December, and look to his political capacity.  Shall we judge him by the eight months he has reigned?  On the one hand look at his power, and on the other at his acts.  What can he do?  Everything.  What has he done?  Nothing.  With his unlimited power a man of genius, in eight months, would have changed the whole face of France, of Europe, perhaps.  He would not, certainly, have effaced the crime of his starting-point, but he might have covered it.  By dint of material improvements he might have succeeded, perhaps, in masking from the nation his moral abasement.  Indeed, we must admit that for a dictator of genius the thing was not difficult.  A certain number of social problems, elaborated during these last few years by several powerful minds, seemed to be ripe, and might receive immediate, practical solution, to the great profit and satisfaction of the nation.  Of this, Louis Bonaparte does not appear to have had any idea.  He has not approached, he has not had a glimpse of one of them.  He has not even found at the Elysee any old remains of the socialist meditations of Ham.  He has added several new crimes to his first one, and in this he has been logical.  With the exception of these crimes he has produced nothing.  Absolute power, no initiative!  He has taken France and does not know what to do with it.  In truth, we are tempted to pity this eunuch struggling with omnipotence.

It is true, however, that this dictator keeps in motion; let us do him this justice; he does not remain quiet for an instant; he sees with affright the gloom and solitude around him; people sing who are afraid in the dark, but he keeps moving.  He makes a fuss, he goes at everything, he runs after projects; being unable to create, he decrees; he endeavours to mask his nullity; he is perpetual motion; but, alas! the wheel turns in empty space.  Conversion of rentes?  Of what profit has it been to this day?  Saving of eighteen millions!  Very good:  the annuitants lose them, but the President and the Senate, with their two endowments, pocket them; the benefit to France is zero.  Credit Foncier? no capital forthcoming.  Railways? they are decreed, and then laid aside.  It is the same with all these things as with the working-men’s cities.  Louis Bonaparte subscribes, but does not pay.  As for the budget, the budget controlled by the blind men in the Council of State, and voted by the dumb men in the Corps Legislatif, there is an abyss beneath it.  There was no possible or efficacious budget but a great reduction in the army:  two hundred thousand soldiers left at home, two hundred millions saved.  Just try to touch the army! the soldier, who would regain his freedom, would applaud, but what would the officer say?  And in reality, it is not the soldier but the officer who is caressed.  Then Paris and Lyons must be guarded, and all the other cities; and afterwards, when we are Emperor, a little European war must be got up.  Behold the gulf!

If from financial questions we pass to political institutions, oh! there the neo-Bonapartists flourish abundantly, there are the creations!  Good heavens, what creations!  A Constitution in the style of Ravrio, ­we have been examining it, ­ornamented with palm-leaves and swans’ necks, borne to the Elysee with old easy-chairs in the carriages of the garde-meuble; the Conservative Senate restitched and regilded, the Council of State of 1806 refurbished and new-bordered with fresh lace; the old Corps Legislatif patched up, with new nails and fresh paint, minus Laine and plus Morny!  In lieu of liberty of the press, the bureau of public spirit; in place of individual liberty, the ministry of police.  All these “institutions,” which we have passed in review, are nothing more than the old salon furniture of the Empire.  Beat it, dust it, sweep away the cobwebs, splash it over with stains of French blood, and you have the establishment of 1852.  This bric-a-brac governs France.  These are the creations!

Where is common sense? where is reason? where is truth?  Not a sound side of contemporary intelligence that has not received a shock, not a just conquest of the age that has not been thrown down and broken.  All sorts of extravagance become possible.  All that we have seen since the 2nd of December is a gallop, through all that is absurd, of a commonplace man broken loose.

These individuals, the malefactor and his accomplices, are in possession of immense, incomparable, absolute, unlimited power, sufficient, we repeat, to change the whole face of Europe.  They make use of it only for amusement.  To enjoy and to enrich themselves, such is their “socialism.”  They have stopped the budget on the public highway; the coffers are open; they fill their money-bags:  they have money, ­do you want some, here you are!  All the salaries are doubled or trebled; we have given the figures above.  Three ministers, Turgot (for there is a Turgot in this affair), Persigny and Maupas, have a million each of secret funds; the Senate a million, the Council of State half a million, the officers of the 2nd of December have a Napoleon-month, that is to say, millions; the soldiers of the 2nd of December have medals, that is to say, millions; M. Murat wants millions and will have them; a minister gets married, ­quick, half a million; M. Bonaparte, quia nominor Poleo, has twelve millions, plus four millions, ­sixteen millions.  Millions, millions!  This regime is called Million.  M. Bonaparte has three hundred horses for private use, the fruit and vegetables of the national domains, and parks and gardens formerly royal; he is stuffed to repletion; he said the other day:  “all my carriages,” as Charles V said:  “all my Spains,” and as Peter the Great said:  “all my Russias.”  The marriage of Gamache is celebrated at the Elysee; the spits are turning day and night before the fireworks; according to the bulletins published on the subject, the bulletins of the new Empire, they consume there six hundred and fifty pounds of meat every day; the Elysee will soon have one hundred and forty-nine kitchens, like the Castle of Schoenbrunn; they drink, they eat, they laugh, they feast; banquet at all the ministers’, banquet at the Ecole Militaire, banquet at the Hotel de Ville, banquet at the Tuileries, a monster fête on the 10th of May, a still more monster fête on the 15th of August; they swim in all sorts of abundance and intoxication.  And the man of the people, the poor day-labourer who is out of work, the pauper in rags, with bare feet, to whom summer brings no bread, and winter no wood, whose old mother lies in agony upon a rotten mattress, whose daughter walks the streets for a livelihood, whose little children are shivering with hunger, fever and cold, in the hovels of Faubourg Saint-Marceau, in the cock-lofts of Rouen, and in the cellars of Lille, does any one think of him?  What is to become of him?  What is done for him?  Let him die like a dog!

CHAPTER X

THE TWO PROFILES OF M. BONAPARTE

The curious part of it is that they are desirous of being respected; a general is venerable, a minister is sacred.  The Countess d’Andl ­, a young woman of Brussels, was at Paris in March, 1852, and was one day in a salon in Faubourg Saint-Honore when M. de P. entered.  Madame d’Andl ­, as she went out, passed before him, and it happened that, thinking probably of something else, she shrugged her shoulders.  M. de P. noticed it; the following day Madame d’Andl ­ was apprised, that henceforward, under pain of being expelled from France like a representative of the people, she must abstain from every mark of approbation or disapprobation when she happened to meet a minister.

Under this corporal-government, and under this countersign-constitution, everything proceeds in military form.  The French people consult the order of the day to know how they must get up, how they must go to bed, how they must dress, in what toilette they may go to the sitting of the court, or to the soiree of the prefect; they are forbidden to make mediocre verses; to wear beards; the frill and the white cravat are laws of state.  Rule, discipline, passive obedience, eyes cast down, silence in the ranks; such is the yoke under which bows at this moment the nation of initiative and of liberty, the great revolutionary France.  The reformer will not stop until France shall be enough of a barrack for the generals to exclaim:  “Good!” and enough of a seminary for the bishops to say:  “That will do!”

Do you like soldiers? they are to be found everywhere.  The Municipal Council of Toulouse gives in its resignation; the Prefect Chapuis-Montlaville replaces the mayor by a colonel, the first deputy by a colonel, and the second deputy by a colonel. Military men take the inside of the sidewalk.  “The soldiers,” says Mably, “considering themselves in the place of the citizens who formerly made the consuls, the dictators, the censors, and the tribunes, associated with the government of the emperors a species of military democracy.”  Have you a shako on your head? then do what you please.  A young man returning from a ball, passed through Rue de Richelieu before the gate of the National Library; the sentinel took aim at him and killed him; the journals of the following morning said:  “The young man is dead,” and there it ended.  Timour Bey granted to his companions-in-arms, and to their descendants to the seventh generation, impunity for all crimes whatsoever, provided the delinquent had not committed a crime nine times.  The sentinel of Rue Richelieu has, therefore, eight citizens more to kill before he can be brought before a court-martial.  It is a good thing to be a soldier, but not so good to be a citizen.  At the same time, however, this unfortunate army is dishonoured.  On the 3rd of December, they decorated the police officers who arrested its representatives and its generals; though it is equally true that the soldiers themselves received two louis per man.  Oh, shame on every side! money to the soldiers, and the cross to the police spies!

Jesuitism and corporalism, this is the sum total of the regime.  The whole political theory of M. Bonaparte is composed of two hypocrisies ­a military hypocrisy towards the army, a catholic hypocrisy towards the clergy.  When it is not Fracasse it is Basile.  Sometimes it is both together.  In this manner he succeeded wonderfully in duping at the same time Montalembert, who does not believe in France, and Saint-Arnaud who does not believe in God.

Does the Dictator smell of incense?  Does he smell of tobacco?  Smell and see.  He smells of both tobacco and incense.  Oh, France! what a government is this!  The spurs pass by beneath the cassock.  The coup d’etat goes to mass, thrashes the civilians, reads its breviary, embraces Catin, tells its beads, empties the wine pots, and takes the sacrament.  The coup d’etat asserts, what is doubtful, that we have gone back to the time of the Jacqueries; but this much is certain, that it takes us back to the time of the Crusades.  Cæsar goes crusading for the Pope. Diex el volt. The Elysee has the faith, and the thirst also, of the Templar.

To enjoy and to live well, we repeat, and to consume the budget; to believe nothing, to make the most of everything; to compromise at once two sacred things, military honour and religious faith; to stain the altar with blood and the standard with holy water; to make the soldier ridiculous, and the priest a little ferocious; to mix up with that great political fraud which he calls his power, the Church and the nation, the conscience of the Catholic and the conscience of the patriot.  This is the system of Bonaparte the Little.

All his acts, from the most monstrous to the most puerile, from that which is hideous to that which is laughable, are stamped with this twofold scheme.  For instance, national solemnities bore him.  The 24th of February and the 4th of May:  these are disagreeable or dangerous reminders, which obstinately return at fixed periods.  An anniversary is an intruder; let us suppress anniversaries.  So be it.  We will keep but one birthday, our own.  Excellent.  But with one fête only how are two parties to be satisfied ­the soldier party and the priest party?  The soldier party is Voltairian.  Where Canrobert smiles, Riancey makes a wry face.  What’s to be done?  You shall see.  Your great jugglers are not embarrassed by such a trifle.  The Moniteur one fine morning declares that there will be henceforth but one national fête, the 15th of August.  Hereupon a semi-official commentary:  the two masks of the Dictator begin to speak.  “The 15th of August,” says the Ratapoil mouth, “Saint Napoleon’s day!” “The 15th of August,” says the Tartuffe mouth, “the fête of the Holy Virgin!” On one side the Second-of-December puffs out its cheeks, magnifies its voice, draws its long sabre and exclaims:  “Sacre-bleu, grumblers!  Let us celebrate the birthday of Napoleon the Great!” On the other, it casts down its eyes, makes the sign of the cross, and mumbles:  “My very dear brethren, let us adore the sacred heart of Mary!”

The present government is a hand stained with blood, which dips a finger in the holy water.

CHAPTER XI

RECAPITULATION

But we are asked:  “Are you going a little too far? are you not unjust?  Grant him something.  Has he not to a certain extent ‘made Socialism?’” and the Credit Foncier, the railroads, and the lowering of the interest are brought upon the carpet.

We have already estimated these measures at their proper value; but, while we admit that this is “Socialism,” you would be simpletons to ascribe the credit to M. Bonaparte.  It is not he who has made socialism, but time.

A man is swimming against a rapid current; he struggles with unheard-of efforts, he buffets the waves with hand and head, and shoulder, and knee.  You say:  “He will succeed in going up.”  A moment after, you look, and he has gone farther down.  He is much farther down the river than he was when he started.  Without knowing, or even suspecting it, he loses ground at every effort he makes; he fancies that he is ascending the stream, and he is constantly descending it.  He thinks he is advancing, but he is falling hack.  Falling credit, as you say, lowering of interest, as you say; M. Bonaparte has already made several of those decrees which you choose to qualify as socialistic, and he will make more.  M. Changarnier, had he triumphed instead of M. Bonaparte, would have done as much.  Henry V, should he return to-morrow, would do the same.  The Emperor of Austria does it in Galicia, and the Emperor Nicholas in Lithuania.  But after all, what does this prove? that the torrent which is called Revolution is stronger than the swimmer who is called Despotism.

But even this socialism of M. Bonaparte, what is it?  This, socialism?  I deny it.  Hatred of the middle class it may be, but not socialism.  Look at the socialist department par excellence, the Department of Agriculture and of Commerce, ­he has abolished it.  What has he given you as compensation? the Ministry of Police!  The other socialist department is the Department of Public Instruction, and that is in danger:  one of these days it will be suppressed.  The starting-point of socialism is education, gratuitous and obligatory teaching, knowledge.  To take the children and make men of them, to take the men and make citizens of them ­intelligent, honest, useful, and happy citizens.  Intellectual and moral progress first, and material progress after.  The two first, irresistibly and of themselves, bring on the last.  What does M. Bonaparte do?  He persecutes and stifles instruction everywhere.  There is one pariah in our France of the present day, and that is the schoolmaster.

Have you ever reflected on what a schoolmaster really is ­on that magistracy in which the tyrants of old took shelter, like criminals in the temple, a certain refuge?  Have you ever thought of what that man is who teaches children?  You enter the workshop of a wheelwright; he is making wheels and shafts; you say, “this is a useful man;” you enter a weaver’s, who is making cloth; you say, “this is a valuable man;” you enter the blacksmith’s shop; he is making pick-axes, hammers, and ploughshares; you say, “this is a necessary man;” you salute these men, these skilful labourers.  You enter the house of a schoolmaster, ­salute him more profoundly; do you know what he is doing? he is manufacturing minds.

He is the wheelwright, the weaver, and the blacksmith of the work, in which he is aiding God, ­the future.

Well! to-day, thanks to the reigning clerical party, as the schoolmaster must not be allowed to work for this future, as this future is to consist of darkness and degradation, not of intelligence and light, ­do you wish to know in what manner this humble and great magistrate, the schoolmaster, is made to do his work?  The schoolmaster serves mass, sings in the choir, rings the vesper bell, arranges the seats, renews the flowers before the sacred heart, furbishes the altar candlesticks, dusts the tabernacle, folds the copes and the chasubles, counts and keeps in order the linen of the sacristy, puts oil in the lamps, beats the cushion of the confessional, sweeps out the church, and sometimes the rectory; the remainder of his time, on condition that he does not pronounce either of those three words of the devil, Country, Republic, Liberty, he may employ, if he thinks proper, in teaching little children to say their A, B, C.

M. Bonaparte strikes at instruction at the same moment above and below:  below, to please the priests, above, to please the bishops.  At the same time that he is trying to close the village school, he mutilates the College de France.  He overturns with one blow the professors’ chairs of Quinet and of Michelet.  One fine morning, he declares, by decree, Greek and Latin to be under suspicion, and, so far as he can, forbids all intercourse with the ancient poets and historians of Athens and of Rome, scenting in AEschylus and in Tacitus a vague odour of demagogy.  With a stroke of the pen, for instance, he exempts all medical men from literary qualification, which causes Doctor Serres to say:  “We are dispensed, by decree, from knowing how to read and write.”

New taxes, sumptuary taxes, vestiary taxes; nemo audeat comedere praeter duo fercula cum potagio; tax on the living, tax on the dead, tax on successions, tax on carriages, tax on paper.  “Bravo!” shouts the beadle party, “fewer books; tax upon dogs, the collars will pay; tax upon senators, the armorial bearings will pay.” ­“All this will make me popular!” says M. Bonaparte, rubbing his hands.  “He is the socialist Emperor,” vociferate the trusty partisans of the faubourgs.  “He is the Catholic Emperor,” murmur the devout in the sacristies.  How happy he would be if he could pass in the latter for Constantine, and in the former for Babeuf!  Watchwords are repeated, adhesion is declared, enthusiasm spreads from one to another, the Ecole Militaire draws his cypher with bayonets and pistol-barrels, Abbe Gaume and Cardinal Gousset applaud, his bust is crowned with flowers in the market, Nanterre dedicates rosebushes to him, social order is certainly saved, property, family, and religion breathe again, and the police erect a statue to him.

Of bronze?

Fie! that may do for the uncle.

Of marble! Tu es Pietri et super hanc pietram aedificabo effigiem meam.

“The subscriptions of the clerks, whose zeal it was necessary to moderate, will be apportioned as follows: ­Chief of division 10fr., chief of a bureau 6fr., clerks at a salary of 1,800fr., 3fr.; at 1,500fr., 2fc.; and finally, at 1,200fr., 2fr.  It is calculated that this subscription will amount to upwards of 6,000 francs.”

That which he attacks, that which he persecutes, that which they all persecute with him, upon which they pounce, which they wish to crush, to burn, to suppress, to destroy, to annihilate, is it this poor obscure man who is called primary instructor?  Is it this sheet of paper that is called a journal?  Is it this bundle of sheets which is called a book?  Is it this machine of wood and iron which is called a press?  No, it is thou, thought, it is thou, human reason, it is thou, nineteenth century, it is thou, Providence, it is thou, God!

We who combat them are “the eternal enemies of order.”  We are ­for they can as yet find nothing but this worn-out word ­we are demagogues.

In the language of the Duke of Alva, to believe in the sacredness of the human conscience, to resist the Inquisition, to brave the state for one’s faith, to draw the sword for one’s country, to defend one’s worship, one’s city, one’s home, one’s house, one’s family, and one’s God, was called vagabondism; in the language of Louis Bonaparte, to struggle for freedom, for justice, for the right, to fight in the cause of progress, of civilisation, of France, of mankind, to wish for the abolition of war, and of the penalty of death, to take au serieux the fraternity of men, to believe in a plighted oath, to take up arms for the constitution of one’s country, to defend the laws, ­this is called demagogy.

The man is a demagogue in the nineteenth century, who in the sixteenth would have been a vagabond.

This much being granted, that the dictionary of the Academy no longer exists, that it is night at noonday, that a cat is no longer called cat, and that Baroche is no longer called a knave; that justice is a chimera, that history is a dream, that the Prince of Orange was a vagabond, and the Duke of Alva a just man; that Louis Bonaparte is identical with Napoleon the Great, that they who have violated the Constitution are saviours, and that they who defended it are brigands, ­in a word that human probity is dead:  very good! in that case I admire this government It works well.  It is a model of its species.  It compresses, it represses, it oppresses, it imprisons, it exiles, it shoots down with grape-shot, it exterminates, and it even “pardons!” It exercises authority with cannon-balls, and clemency with the flat of the sabre.

“At your pleasure,” repeat some worthy incorrigibles of the former party of order, “be indignant, rail, stigmatize, disavow, ­’tis all the same to us; long live stability!  All these things put together constitute, after all, a stable government.”

Stable!  We have already expressed ourselves on the subject of this stability.

Stability!  I admire such stability.  If it rained newspapers in France for two days only, on the morning of the third nobody would know what had become of M. Louis Bonaparte.

No matter; this man is a burden upon the whole age, he disfigures the nineteenth century, and there will be in this century, perhaps, two or three years upon which it will be recognised, by some shameful mark or other, that Louis Bonaparte sat down upon them.

This person, we grieve to say it, is now the question that occupies all mankind.

At certain epochs in history, the whole human race, from all points of the earth, fix their eyes upon some mysterious spot whence it seems that universal destiny is about to issue.  There have been hours when the world has looked towards the Vatican:  Gregory VII and Leo X occupied the pontifical throne; other hours, when it has contemplated the Louvre; Philip Augustus, Louis IX, Francois I, and Henri IV were there; the Escorial, Saint-Just:  Charles V dreamed there; Windsor:  Elizabeth the Great reigned there; Versailles:  Louis XIV shone there surrounded by stars; the Kremlin:  one caught a glimpse there of Peter the Great; Potsdam:  Frederick II was closeted there with Voltaire.  At present, history, bow thy head, the whole universe is looking at the Elysee!

That species of bastard door, guarded by two sentry-boxes painted on canvas, at the extremity of Faubourg Saint-Honore, that is the spot towards which the eyes of the civilized world are now turned with a sort of profound anxiety!  Ah! what sort of place is that, whence no idea has issued that has not been a plot, no action that has not been a crime?  What sort of place is that wherein reside all kinds of cynicism and all kinds of hypocrisy?  What sort of place is that where bishops elbow Jeanne Poisson on the staircase, and, as a hundred years ago, bow to the ground before her; where Samuel Bernard laughs in a corner with Laubardemont; which Escobar enters, arm-in-arm with Guzman d’Alfarache; where (frightful rumour), in a thicket in the garden, they despatch, it is said, with the bayonet men whom they dare not bring to trial; where one hears a man say to a woman who is weeping and interceding:  “I overlook your love-affairs, you must overlook my hatreds!” What sort of place is that where the orgies of 1852 intrude upon and dishonour the mourning of 1815! where Caesarion, with his arms crossed, or his hands behind his back, walks under those very trees, and in those very avenues still haunted by the indignant phantom of Cæsar?

That place is the blot upon Paris; that place is the pollution of the age; that door, whence issue all sorts of joyous sounds, flourishes of trumpets, music, laughter, and the jingling of glasses; that door, saluted during the day by the passing battalions; illuminated at night; thrown wide open with insolent confidence, ­is a sort of public insult always present.  There is the centre of the world’s shame.

Alas! of what is France thinking?  Of a surety, we must awake this slumbering nation, we must take it by the arm, we must shake it, we must speak to it; we must scour the fields, enter the villages, go into the barracks, speak to the soldier who no longer knows what he is doing, speak to the labourer who has in his cabin an engraving of the Emperor, and who, for that reason, votes for everything they ask; we must remove the radiant phantom that dazzles their eyes; this whole situation is nothing but a huge and deadly joke.  We must expose this joke, probe it to the bottom, disabuse the people, ­the country people above all, ­excite them, agitate them, stir them up, show them the empty houses, the yawning graves, and make them touch with their finger the horror of this regime.  The people are good and honest; they will comprehend.  Yes, peasant, there are two, the great and the little, the illustrious and the infamous, ­Napoleon and Naboleon!

Let us sum up this government!  Who is at the Elysee and the Tuileries?  Crime.  Who is established at the Luxembourg?  Baseness.  Who at the Palais Bourbon?  Imbecility.  Who at the Palais d’Orsay?  Corruption.  Who at the Palais de Justice?  Prevarication.  And who are in the prisons, in the fortresses, in the dungeons, in the casemates, in the hulks, at Lambessa, at Cayenne, in exile?  Law, honour, intelligence, liberty, and the right.

Oh! ye proscribed, of what do you complain?  You have the better part.