id and gainsaid, what came forth from the chaos?
always the spark! What came forth from the cloud? always light! All
that the tempest could do was to agitate the ray of light, and change
it into lightning. There, in that tribune, has been propounded,
analyzed, clarified, and almost always determined, every question of
the day: questions of finance, questions of credit, questions of
labour, questions of circulation, questions of salary, questions of
state, questions of the land, questions of peace, questions of war.
There, for the first time, was pronounced that phrase which contained a
whole new alignment of society,--the Rights of Man. There, for fifty
years, has been heard the ringing of the anvil upon which supernatural
smiths were forging pure ideas,--ideas, those swords of the people,
those lances of justice, that armour of law. There, suddenly
impregnated with sympathetic currents, like embers which redden in the
wind, all those who had flame in their hearts, great advocates like
Ledru-Rollin and Berryer, great historians like Guizot, great poets
like Lamartine, rose at once, and naturally, into great orators.

That tribune was a place of strength and of virtue. It saw, it inspired
(for it is easy to believe that these emanations sprang from it), all
those acts of devotion, of abnegation, of energy, of intrepidity. As
for us, we honour every display of courage, even in the ranks of those
who are opposed to us. One day the tribune was surrounded with
darkness; it seemed as if an abyss had opened around it; and in this
darkness one heard a noise like the roaring of the sea; and suddenly,
in that impenetrable night, above that ledge of marble to which clung
the strong hand of Danton, one saw arise a pike bearing a bleeding
head! Boissy d'Anglas saluted it.

That was a day of menace. But the people do not overthrow tribunes. The
tribunes belong to the people, and the people know it. Place a tribune
in the centre of the world, and in a few days, in the four corners of
the earth, the Republic will arise. The tribune shines for the people,
and they are not unaware of it. Sometimes the tribune irritates the
people, and makes them foam with rage; sometimes they beat it with
their waves, they overflow it even, as on the 15th of May, but then
they retire majestically like the ocean, and leave it standing upright
like a beacon. To overthrow the tribune is, on the part of the people,
rank folly; it is the proper work of tyran