nvent it forthwith. But here we have it, and live by it."

"You will die of it," returned the German diplomatist. "Can you not see
that if you enlighten the masses, and raise them in the political scale,
you make it all the harder for the individual to rise above their
level? Can you not see that if you sow the seeds of reasoning among the
working-classes, you will reap revolt, and be the first to fall victims?
What do they smash in Paris when a riot begins?"

"The street-lamps!" said Nathan; "but we are too modest to fear for
ourselves, we only run the risk of cracks."

"As a nation, you have too much mental activity to allow any government
to run its course without interference. But for that, you would make
the conquest of Europe a second time, and win with the pen all that you
failed to keep with the sword."

"Journalism is an evil," said Claude Vignon. "The evil may have its
uses, but the present Government is resolved to put it down. There will
be a battle over it. Who will give way? That is the question."

"The Government will give way," said Blondet. "I keep telling people
that with all my might! Intellectual power is _the_ great power in
France; and the press has more wit than all men of intellect put
together, and the hypocrisy of Tartufe besides."

"Blondet! Blondet! you are going too far!" called Finot. "Subscribers
are present."

"You are the proprietor of one of those poison shops; you have reason to
be afraid; but I can laugh at the whole business, even if I live by it."

"Blondet is right," said Claude Vignon. "Journalism, so far from being
in the hands of a priesthood, came to be first a party weapon, and then
a commercial speculation, carried on without conscience or scruple, like
other commercial speculations. Every newspaper, as Blondet says, is a
shop to which people come for opinions of the right shade. If there were
a paper for hunchbacks, it would set forth plainly, morning and evening,
in its columns, the beauty, the utility, and necessity of deformity. A
newspaper is not supposed to enlighten its readers, but to supply them
with congenial opinions. Give any newspaper time enough, and it will
be base, hypocritical, shameless, and treacherous; the periodical press
will be the death of ideas, systems, and individuals; nay, it will
flourish upon their decay. It will take the credit of all creations
of the brain; the harm that it does is done anonymously. We, for
instance--I, Claude Vignon; y