, cause seven million five hundred thousand voters to declare that
two and two make five, that the straight line is the longest way, that
the whole is less than a part; cause eight millions, ten millions, a
hundred millions of voters so to declare, and you will not have
advanced a single step.

Well--you will be surprised to hear it--there are axioms in probity, in
honesty, in justice, as there are axioms in geometry; and moral truth
is no more at the mercy of a vote than is algebraic truth.

The notion of good and evil is insoluble by universal suffrage. It is
not given to a ballot to make the false true, or injustice just. Human
conscience is not to be put to the vote.

Now, do you understand?

Look at that lamp, that little obscure light, unnoticed, forgotten in a
corner, lost in the darkness. Look at it, admire it. It is hardly
visible; it burns in solitude. Make seven million five hundred thousand
mouths breathe upon it at once, and you will not extinguish it. You
will not even cause the flame to flicker. Cause a hurricane to blow;
the flame will continue to ascend, straight and pure, towards Heaven.

That lamp is Conscience.

That flame is the flame which illumines, in the night of exile, the
paper on which I now write.

IX

WHEREIN M. BONAPARTE HAS DECEIVED HIMSELF

Thus then, be your figures what they may, counterfeit or genuine, true
or false, extorted or not, it matters little; they who keep their eyes
steadfastly on justice say, and will continue to say, that crime is
crime, that perjury is perjury, that treachery is treachery, that
murder is murder, that blood is blood, that slime is slime, that a
scoundrel is a scoundrel, that the man who fancies he is copying
Napoleon _en petit_, is copying Lacenaire _en grand_; they say that,
and they will repeat it, despite your figures, seeing that seven
million five hundred thousand votes weigh as nothing against the
conscience of the honest man; seeing that ten millions, that a hundred
millions of votes, that even the whole of mankind, voting _en masse_,
would count as nothing against that atom, that molecule of God, the
soul of the just man; seeing that universal suffrage, which has full
sovereignty over political questions, has no jurisdiction over moral
questions.

I put aside for the moment, as I said just now, your process of
ballotting, with eyes bandaged, gag in mouth, cannon in the streets and
squares, sabres drawn, spies swarming, silence