certain features calculated
to excite misplaced allusions." The censorship interdicts the "Dernier
des Abencerrages," where" it finds too warm an interest in the Spanish
cause." One must read the entire register to see it at work and in
detail, to feel the sinister and grotesque minutia with which it pursues
and destroys, not alone among great or petty writers but, again,
among compilers and insignificant abbreviators, in a translation, in a
dictionary, in a manual, in an almanac, not only ideas but suggestions,
echoes, semblances and oversights in thinking, the possibilities of
awakening reflection and comparison:

* every souvenir of the ancient regime, this or that mention of Kleber
or Moreau, or a particular conversation of Sully and Henry IV.;

* "a game of loto,[6259] which familiarizes youth with the history
of their country," but which says too much about "the family of the
grand-dauphin of Louis XVI. and his aunts";

* the general work of the reveries of Cagliostro and of M. Henri de
Saint-Mesmin, very laudatory of the Emperor, excellent "for filling
the soul of Frenchmen with his presence, but which must leave out three
awkward comparisons that might be detected by the malevolent or the
foolish;"

* the "translation into French verse of several of David's psalms,"
which are not dangerous in Latin but which, in French, have the defect
of a possible application, through coincidence and prophecy, to the
Church as suffering, and to religion as persecuted;

and quantities of other literary insects hatched in the depths of
publication, nearly all ephemeral, crawling and imperceptible, but which
the censor, through zeal and his trade, considers as fearsome dragons
whose heads must be smashed or their teeth extracted.

After the next brood they prove inoffensive, and, better still, are
useful, especially the almanacs,[6260] "in rectifying on various points
the people's attitudes. It will probably be possible after 1812 to
control their composition, and they are filled with anecdotes, songs and
stories adapted to the maintenance of patriotism and of devotion to the
sacred person of His Majesty and to the Napoleonic dynasty."--To this
end, the police likewise improves, orders and pays for dramatic or lyric
productions of all kinds, cantatas, ballets, impromptus, vaudevilles,
comedies, grand-operas, comic operas, a hundred and seventy-six works
in one day, composed for the birth of the King of Rome and paid for in