ever
reads our work to the end will assuredly not credit us with the intention
of extenuating this monstrous deed. Nevertheless, as the deep logic of
actions ought always to be italicized by the historian, it is necessary
here to call to mind and to repeat, even to satiety, that apart from the
members of the Left, of whom a very small number were present, and whom
we have mentioned by name, the three hundred Representatives who thus
defiled before the eyes of the crowd, constituted the old Royalists and
reactionary majority of the Assembly. If it were possible to forget,
that--whatever were their errors, whatever were their faults, and, we
venture to add, whatever were their illusions--these persons thus treated
were the Representatives of the leading civilized nation, were sovereign
Legislators, senators of the people, inviolable Deputies, and sacred by
the great law of Democracy, and that in the same manner as each man bears
in himself something of the mind of God, so each of these nominees of
universal suffrage bore something of the soul of France; if it were
possible to forget this for a moment, it assuredly would be a spectacle
perhaps more laughable than sad, and certainly more philosophical than
lamentable to see, on this December morning, after so many laws of
repression, after so many exceptional measures, after so many votes of
censure and of the state of siege, after so many refusals of amnesty,
after so many affronts to equity, to justice, to the human conscience, to
the public good faith, to right, after so many favors to the police,
after so many smiles bestowed on absolution, the entire Party of Order
arrested in a body and taken to prison by the _sergents de ville_!

One day, or rather, one night, the moment having come to save society,
the _coup d'etat_ abruptly seizes the Demagogues, and finds that it holds
by the collar, Whom? the Royalists.

They arrived at the barracks, formerly the barracks of the Royal Guard,
and on the pediment of which is a carved escutcheon, whereon are still
visible the traces of the three _fleurs de lis_ effaced in 1830. They
halted. The door was opened. "Why!" said M. de Broglie, "here we are."

At that moment a great placard posted on the barrack wall by the side of
the door bore in big letters--

"REVISION OF THE CONSTITUTION."

It was the advertisement of a pamphlet, published two or three days
previous to the _coup d'etat_, without any author's name, demanding the