able legislators, will be collared
by corporals, when our glorious regiments will transform themselves,
for the profit of one man and to the shame of the nation, into
gold-laced hordes and pretorian bands, when the sword of France will
become a thing that strikes from behind, like the dagger of a hired
assassin, when the life-blood of the first city in the world, done to
death, will splash the gold epaulettes of your generals!"

The murmur becomes an uproar, cries of "Order!" are heard from all
quarters. The orator is interrupted: "You have been insulting the
government, now you insult the army!" The President calls the orator to
order.

The orator resumes:

"And if it should happen some day that a man, having in his hand the
five hundred thousand officeholders who constitute the government, and
the four hundred thousand soldiers composing the army, if it should
happen that this man should tear up the Constitution, should violate
every law, break every oath, trample upon every right, commit every
crime, do you know what your irremovable magistrates, instructors in
the right, and guardians of the law, would do? They would hold their
tongues."

The uproar prevents the orator from completing his sentence. The tumult
becomes a tempest.--"This man respects nothing. After the government
and the army, he drags the magistracy in the mire! Censure! censure!"
The orator is censured and the censure entered in the journal. The
President declares that, if he continues, the Assembly will proceed to
a vote, and the floor will be taken from him.

The orator continues: "And your paid clergy! and your office-holding
bishops! On the day when a pretender shall have employed in such
enterprises the government, the magistracy, and the army; on the day
when all these institutions shall drip with the blood shed by and for
the traitor; when, placed between the man who has committed the crimes
and God who orders an anathema to be launched against the criminal--do
you know what these bishops of yours will do? They will prostrate
themselves, not before God, but before man!"

Can you form any idea of the frenzied shouts and imprecations that
would greet such words? Can you imagine the shouts, the apostrophes,
the threats, the whole Assembly rising _en masse_, the tribune
escaladed and with difficulty guarded by the ushers! The orator has
profaned every sanctified ark in succession, and he has ended by
profaning the Holy of Holies, the clerg