f the lambs against the wolf.

'Though I have said,' he continued, 'that he has been conspiring ever
since his election, I do not believe that he intended to strike so soon.
His plan was to wait till next March when the fears of May 1852 would be
most intense. Two circumstances forced him on more rapidly. One was the
candidature of the Prince de Joinville. He thought him the only dangerous
competitor. The other was an agitation set on foot by the Legitimists in
the _Conseils generaux_ for the repeal of the law of May 31. That law was
his moral weapon against the Assembly, and he feared that if he delayed,
it might be abolished without him.'

'And how long,' I asked, 'will this tyranny last?'

'It will last,' he answered, 'until it is unpopular with the mass of the
people. At present the disapprobation is confined to the educated
classes. We cannot bear to be deprived of the power of speaking or of
writing. We cannot bear that the fate of France should depend on the
selfishness, or the vanity, or the fears, or the caprice of one man, a
foreigner by race and by education, and of a set of military ruffians and
of infamous civilians, fit only to have formed the staff and the privy
council of Catiline. We cannot bear that the people which carried the
torch of Liberty through Europe should now be employed in quenching all
its lights. But these are not the feelings of the multitude. Their insane
fear of Socialism throws them headlong into the arms of despotism. As in
Prussia, as in Hungary, as in Austria, as in Italy, so in France, the
democrats have served the cause of the absolutists. May 1852 was a
spectre constantly swelling as it drew nearer. But now that the weakness
of the Red party has been proved, now that 10,000 of those who are
supposed to be its most active members are to be sent to die of hunger
and marsh fever in Cayenne, the people will regret the price at which
their visionary enemy has been put down. Thirty-seven years of liberty
have made a free press and free parliamentary discussion necessaries to
us. If Louis Napoleon refuses them, he will be execrated as a tyrant. If
he grants them, they must destroy him. We always criticise our rulers
severely, often unjustly. It is impossible that so rash and wrong-headed
a man surrounded, and always wishing to be surrounded, by men whose
infamous character is their recommendation to him, should not commit
blunders and follies without end. They will be exposed, perhaps