ontrary is a slanderer; electoral meetings
were held; the walls were hidden beneath placards; the promenaders in
Paris swept with their feet, on the boulevards and on the streets, a
snow of ballots, white, blue, yellow, red; everybody spoke who chose,
wrote who chose; the figures were accurate; it was not Baroche who
counted, it was Bareme; Louis Blanc, Guinard, Felix Pyat, Raspail,
Caussidiere, Thorne, Ledru-Rollin, Etienne Arago, Albert, Barbes,
Blanqui, and Gent, were the inspectors; it was they themselves who
announced the seven million five hundred thousand votes. Be it so. We
concede all that. What then? What conclusion does the _coup d'etat_
thence derive?

What conclusion? It rubs its hands, it asks nothing further; that is
quite sufficient; it concludes that all is right, all complete, all
finished, that nothing more is to be said, that it is "absolved."

Stop, there!

The free vote, the actual figures--these are only the physical side of
the question; the moral side remains to be considered. Ah! there is a
moral side, then? Undoubtedly, prince, and that is precisely the true
side, the important side of this question of the 2nd of December. Let
us look into it.

VI

THE MORAL SIDE OF THE QUESTION

First, M. Bonaparte, it is expedient that you should acquire a notion
what the human conscience is.

There are two things in this world--learn this novelty--which men call
good and evil. You must be informed that lying is not good, treachery
is evil, assassination is worse. It makes no difference that it is
useful, it is prohibited. "By whom?" you will add. We will explain that
point to you, a little farther on; but let us proceed. Man--you must
also be informed--is a thinking being, free in this world, responsible
in the next. Singularly enough--and you will be surprised to hear
it--he is not created merely to enjoy himself, to indulge all his
fancies, to follow the hazard of his appetites, to crush whatever he
finds before him in his path, blade of grass or plighted oath, to
devour whatever presents itself when he is hungry. Life is not his
prey. For example, to pass from nothing a year to twelve hundred
thousand francs, it is not permitted to take an oath which one has no
intention to keep; and, to pass from twelve hundred thousand francs to
twelve millions, it is not permitted to crush the constitution and laws
of one's country, to rush from an ambuscade upon a sovereign assembly,
to bombard Pari