ture?" asked Rollin. "We all know he is quite frantic on
the topic of popular education."

"Oh! yes, we all understand Guizot's love for the people! His system of
education promulgated in 1833 was so very beautiful that it was almost a
pity it was utterly impracticable. But Guizot has very little to do with
Pagnerre's book-shelves, or with Pagnerre in any way, except to
prosecute him from time to time for publishing Cormenin's withering
tracts designed for the Minister himself, and yet it would almost seem
there was a design to exhaust the market of the publications of our
friends; only the great mass of them go to the provinces and large
quantities abroad. My own little brochure, 'The Organization of Work,'
after having fallen stillborn from the press, died a natural death and
been laid out in state for a year or two on Pagnerre's shelves, all at
once is resurrected, runs through half a dozen large editions, and is
translated into half a dozen languages. The same is true of Lamartine's
'Vision of the Future,' and the same of Cormenin's tracts, and of the
ten thousand brochures on this same subject of Communism in all its
different shades and phrases, and in every variety of size, form and
style of writing and appearance. These publications are adapted to every
taste and comprehension. The workman is suited as well as the savant.
All this savors of magic. Even my most sanguine anticipations are
surpassed by reality. There will never long lack a supply for a demand,
be that demand what it may. A demand for Fourier literature has turned
all the pens in Paris hard at work upon it--novelists, essayists,
pamphleteers--while the Porte St. Antoine, the Porte St. Martin and all
the minor theatres, where are found the masses, swarm with melodramas,
farces and vaudevilles on the same subject, and none of you have
forgotten the powerful play, entitled 'The Laborer of Lyons,' attributed
to M. Dantes, recently produced with such success on the boards of the
Francais itself."

"And who is this M. Dantes," asked Ledru Rollin, "if you will suffer me
to interrupt?"

"Decidedly the most remarkable man in the French Chamber of Deputies,"
replied Marrast. "In powers of natural eloquence I never saw his rival."

"Nor is that all," added Louis Blanc. "Unlike most men noted as mere
orators, he is a sound logician, as well as a polished rhetorician. As a
political economist he has few equals. To that subject he seems to have
devoted much s