with his sash girded?"

"Doubtless," he answered.

"Well, then," resumed I, "here I am! Take me."

"We will all go," exclaimed Jules Favre.

The delegate observed that it would suffice for one of us to be there at
the moment when the societies should make their appearance, and that he
could then notify the other members of the Committee to come and join
him. It was settled that as soon as the places of meeting and the
rallying-points should be agreed upon, he would send some one to let me
know, and to take me wherever the societies might be. "Before an hour's
time you shall hear from me," said he on leaving us.

As the delegates were going away Mathieu de la Drome arrived. On coming
in he halted on the threshold of the door, he was pale, he cried out to
us, "You are no longer in Paris, you are no longer under the Republic;
you are in Naples and under King Bomba."

He had come from the boulevards.

Later on I again saw Mathieu de la Drome. I said to him, "Worse than
Bomba,--Satan."

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE VERIFICATION OF MORAL LAWS

The carnage of the Boulevard Montmartre constitutes the originality of
the _coup d'etat_. Without this butchery the 2d of December would only
be an 18th Brumaire. Owing to the massacre Louis Bonaparte escapes the
charge of plagiarism.

Up to that time he had only been an imitator. The little hat at Boulogne,
the gray overcoat, the tame eagle appeared grotesque. What did this parody
mean? people asked. He made them laugh; suddenly he made
them tremble.

He who becomes detestable ceases to be ridiculous.

Louis Bonaparte was more than detestable, he was execrable.

He envied the hugeness of great crimes; he wished to equal the worst.
This striving after the horrible has given him a special place to
himself in the menagerie of tyrants. Petty rascality trying to emulate
deep villainy, a little Nero swelling himself to a huge Lacenaire; such
is this phenomenon. Art for art, assassination for assassination.

Louis Bonaparte has created a special genus.

It was in this manner that Louis Bonaparte made his entry into the
Unexpected. This revealed him.

Certain brains are abysses. Manifestly for a long time past Bonaparte
had harbored the design of assassinating in order to reign.
Premeditation haunts criminals, and it is in this manner that treason
begins. The crime is a long time present in them, but shapeless and
shadowy, they are scarcely conscious of it; souls only bla