hould remember him and not leave
him out. Ah, sire, what was written on 'Napoleon le Petit' does not
touch your Majesty; but what touches you is, that no historian of the
age should have to write hereafter, 'While Napoleon III. reigned, Victor
Hugo lived in exile.' What touches you is, that when your people count
gratefully the men of commerce, arms, and science secured by you to
France, no voice shall murmur, 'But where is our poet?' What touches you
is, that, however statesmen and politicians may justify his exclusion,
it may draw no sigh from men of sentiment and impulse, yes, and from
women like myself. What touches you is, that when your own beloved young
prince shall come to read these poems (and when you wish him a princely
nature, you wish, sire, that such things should move him), he may exult
to recall that his imperial father was great enough to overcome this
great poet with magnanimity.

Ah, sire, you are great enough! You can allow for the peculiarity of the
poetical temperament, for the temptations of high gifts, for the fever
in which poets are apt to rage and suffer beyond the measure of other
men. You can consider that when they hate most causelessly there is a
divine love in them somewhere; and that when they see most falsely they
are loyal to some ideal light. Forgive this enemy, this accuser, this
traducer. Disprove him by your generosity. Let no tear of an admirer of
his poetry drop upon your purple. Make an exception of him, as God made
an exception of him when He gave him genius, and call him back _without
condition_ to his country and his daughter's grave.

I have written these words without the knowledge of any. Naturally I
should have preferred, as a woman, to have addressed them through the
mediation of the tender-hearted Empress Eugenie; but, a wife myself, I
felt it would be harder for her Majesty to pardon an offence against the
Emperor Napoleon, than it could be for the Emperor.

And I am driven by an irresistible impulse to your Majesty's feet to ask
this grace. It is a woman's voice, sire, which dares to utter what many
yearn for in silence. I have believed in Napoleon III. Passionately
loving the democracy, I have understood from the beginning that it was
to be served throughout Europe in you and by you. I have trusted you for
doing greatly. I will trust you, besides, for pardoning nobly. You will
be Napoleon in this also.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

[Illustration]

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