roduced heroes and thinkers, those heroes who made all the
revolutions and gave birth to all births, that France whose name meant
liberty, that soul of the world, so to say, which shone resplendent in
Europe, that light.... Well! some one has stepped upon it, and put it
out. There is no longer a France. It is at an end. Look! everywhere
darkness. The world is feeling its way."

Ah! it was so grand. Where are those times, those glorious times,
interspersed with storms, but glorious, when all was life, when all was
liberty, when all was glory? those times when the French people, awake
before all others, and up before the light, their brows illumined by
the dawn of the future already risen for them, said to the other
nations, still drowsy and overborne, and scarcely able to shake their
chains in their sleep: "Fear naught, I work for all, I dig the earth
for all,--I am the workman of the Almighty!"

What profound grief! Regard that torpor where formerly there was such
power! that shame, where formerly there was such pride! that noble
people, whose heads were once held erect and are now lowered!

Alas! Louis Bonaparte has done more than kill persons, he has caused
men's minds to dwindle, he has withered the heart of the citizen. One
must belong to the race of the invincible and the indomitable, to
persevere now in the rugged path of renunciation and of duty. An
indescribable gangrene of material prosperity threatens to cause public
honesty to degenerate into rottenness. Oh! what happiness to be
banished, to be disgraced, to be ruined,--is it not, brave workmen? Is
it not, worthy peasants, driven from France, who have no roof to
shelter you, and no shoes to your feet? What happiness to eat black
bread, to lie on a mattress thrown on the ground, to be out at elbows,
to be away from all this, and to those who say to you: "You are
French!" to answer, "I am proscribed!"

What a pitiful thing is this delight of self-interest and cupidity,
wallowing in the slough of the 2nd of December! Faith! let us live, let
us go into business, let us speculate in zinc and railway shares, let
us make money; it is degrading but it is an excellent thing; a scruple
less, a louis more; let us sell our whole soul at that rate. One runs
to and fro, one rushes about, one cools his heels in anterooms, one
drinks deep of every kind of shame, and if one cannot get a concession
of railways in France or of lands in Africa, one asks for an office. A
host