than now, while I am free to confess
that my journal, 'Le Bon Sens,' which has been a sickly child ever since
its birth, has, within three months, tripled its number of readers, or,
at least, its payers. The same is in the main true of 'Le Monde,' by La
Croix, 'Le Journal du Peuple,' by Dubose, 'Le Courier Francais,' by
Chatelain, 'La Commerce,' by Bert, 'La Minerve,' by Lemaine, 'La
Presse,' by Girardin, and all the journals in Paris which diffuse true
ideas upon labor and the rights of the people, be they in other respects
what they may. Even the 'Charivari,' which views the old King and his
Ministers as fair butts of ridicule, perceives a marked increase in its
patronage since it commenced that course, which sudden popularity
naturally excites it to increase of zeal in the same path. Besides all
this, an army of new papers, aiming to aid the great cause, have not
only sprung up of late, like mushrooms, in Paris, but all over France,
and even all over Europe; and so far appear they from interfering with
each other's prospects that the more there are the better they seem
sustained and the more ably conducted. A swarm of new and unknown
writers for the press on this great subject seems all at once to have
appeared from unseen hiding-places."

"This is very strange, Louis," said Marrast, "and yet it is, doubtless,
very true. I had observed what you remark myself, although I have viewed
the movement less hopefully for the cause of the Republic than you."

"Depend upon it, Armand," said Louis Blanc, smiling, "that
Republicanism and Socialism are identical terms, as much so as Communism
and despotism are antagonistic terms."

"But how do you account for this wonderful change, this unprecedented
fever for Fourierism?" asked Flocon.

"I don't pretend to account for it at all. The merits of the cause have,
perhaps, begun to be properly appreciated. Unusual efforts have been
made by our friends of late. Whole nations and epochs are sometimes
seized with a contagious mania for peculiar species of literature, as
for everything else. But I will hint to you a suspicion which I have
recently entertained, namely, that, after all, the rapid sale and ready
market for every species of Fourier literature is not an unerring
indication of the amount of reading of such literature, or the demand
that actually exists of buyers as well as readers--individual ones at
least. As for the journalistic literature, that I have learned is,
withou