of the thinker, merely a sort of monstrous
simplicity. You have applied what you call "universal suffrage" to a
question to which universal suffrage did not apply. You are not a
politician, you are a malefactor. The question what is to be done with
you is no concern of universal suffrage.

Yes, simplicity; I insist on the term. The bandit of the Abruzzi, his
hands scarcely laved of the blood which still remains under his nails,
goes to seek absolution from the priest; you have sought absolution
from the ballot, only you have forgotten to confess. And, in saying to
the ballot, "Absolve me," you put the muzzle of your pistol to its
forehead.

Ah, wretched, desperate man! To "absolve you," as you call it, is
beyond the popular power, is beyond all human power.

Listen:

Nero, who had invented the Society of the Tenth-of-December, and who,
like yourself, employed it in applauding his comedies, and even, like
you again, his tragedies,--Nero, after he had slashed his mother's
belly a hundred times with a dagger, might, like you, have appealed to
his universal suffrage, which had this further resemblance to yours,
that it was no more impeded by the license of the press; Nero, Pontiff
and Emperor, surrounded by judges and priests prostrate at his feet,
might have placed one of his bleeding hands on the still warm corpse of
the Empress, and raising the other towards Heaven, have called all
Olympus to witness that he had not shed that blood, and have adjured
his universal suffrage to declare in the face of gods and of men that
he, Nero, had not killed that woman; his universal suffrage, working
much as yours works, with the same intelligence, and the same liberty,
might have affirmed by 7,500,000 votes that the divine Caesar Nero,
Pontiff and Emperor, had done no harm to that woman who lay dead;
understand, monsieur, that Nero would not have been "absolved;" it
would have sufficed for one voice, one single voice on earth, the
humblest and most obscure, to lie raised amid that profound night of
the Roman Empire, and to cry: "Nero is a parricide!" for the echo, the
eternal echo of the human conscience to repeat for ever, from people to
people, and from century to century: "Nero slew his mother!"

Well, that voice which protests in the darkness is mine. I exclaim
to-day, and, doubt not that the universal conscience of mankind repeats
with me: "Louis Bonaparte has assassinated France! Louis Bonaparte has
slain his mother!"