the Bonapartists, of
the democrats, of the Communists, rose daily, together with their own
discredit, and in the same measure as they approached the completion of
their legislative work of art, without Thetis having for this purpose to
leave the sea and impart the secret to them. They ought to outwit
fate by means of constitutional artifice, through Section 111 of the
Constitution, according to which every motion to revise the Constitution
had to be discussed three successive times between each of which a full
month was to elapse and required at least a three-fourths majority, with
the additional proviso that not less than 500 members of the National
Assembly voted. They thereby only made the impotent attempt, still to
exercise as a parliamentary minority, to which in their mind's eye they
prophetically saw themselves reduced, a power, that, at this very time,
when they still disposed over the parliamentary majority and over all
the machinery of government, was daily slipping from their weak hands.

Finally, the Constitution entrusts itself for safe keeping, in a
melodramatic paragraph, "to the watchfulness and patriotism of the whole
French people, and of each individual Frenchman," after having
just before, in another paragraph entrusted the "watchful" and the
"patriotic" themselves to the tender, inquisitorial attention of the
High Court, instituted by itself.

That was the Constitution of 1848, which on, the 2d of December, 1851,
was not overthrown by one head, but tumbled down at the touch of a mere
hat; though, true enough, that hat was a three-cornered Napoleon hat.

While the bourgeois' republicans were engaged in the Assembly with the
work of splicing this Constitution, of discussing and voting, Cavaignac,
on the outside, maintained the state of siege of Paris. The state of
siege of Paris was the midwife of the constitutional assembly, during
its republican pains of travail. When the Constitution is later on swept
off the earth by the bayonet, it should not be forgotten that it was
by the bayonet, likewise--and the bayonet turned against the people, at
that--that it had to be protected in its mother's womb, and that by the
bayonet it had to be planted on earth. The ancestors of these "honest
republicans" had caused their symbol, the tricolor, to make the tour of
Europe. These, in their turn also made a discovery, which all of itself,
found its way over the whole continent, but, with ever renewed love,
came ba