rebel, that
recusant, that insurgent, every man's conscience.

You give money, but 'tis the hand receives it, not the conscience.
Conscience! while you are about it, inscribe it on your lists of
exiles. It is an obstinate opponent, pertinacious, persistent,
inflexible, making a disturbance everywhere. Drive it out of France.
You will be at ease then.

Would you like to know what it calls you, even among your friends?
Would you like to know in what terms an honourable chevalier of
Saint-Louis, an octogenarian, a great antagonist of "demagogues," and a
partisan of yours, cast his vote for you on the 20th of December? "He
is a scoundrel," said he, "but a _necessary scoundrel_."

No! there are no necessary scoundrels. No! crime is never useful! No!
crime is never a good. Society saved by treason! Blasphemy! we must
leave it to the archbishops to say these things. Nothing good has evil
for its basis. The just God does not impose on mankind the necessity
for scoundrels. There is nothing necessary in this world but justice
and truth. Had that venerable man thought less of life and more of the
tomb, he would have seen this. Such a remark is surprising on the part
of one advanced in years, for there is a light from God which
enlightens souls approaching the tomb, and shows them the truth.

Never do crime and the right come together: on the day when they should
meet, the words of the human tongue would change their meaning, all
certainty would vanish, social darkness would supervene. When, by
chance, as has been sometimes seen in history, it happens that, for a
moment, crime has the force of law, the very foundations of humanity
tremble. "_Jusque datum sceleri!_" exclaims Lucan, and that line
traverses history, like a cry of horror.

Therefore, and by the admission of your voters, you are a scoundrel. I
omit the word necessary. Make the best of this situation.

"Well, be it so," you say. "But that is precisely the case in question:
one procures 'absolution' by universal suffrage."

Impossible.

What! impossible?

Yes, impossible. I will put your finger on the impossibility.

VIII

AXIOMS

You are a captain of artillery at Berne, Monsieur Louis Bonaparte; you
have necessarily a smattering of algebra and geometry. Here are certain
axioms of which you have, probably, some idea.

Two and two make four.

Between two given points, the straight line is the shortest way.

A part is less than the whole.

Now