cken
gradually. Such abominable deeds are not invented in a moment; they do
not attain perfection at once and at a single bound; they increase and
ripen, shapeless and indecisive, and the centre of the ideas in which
they exist keeps them living, ready for the appointed day, and vaguely
terrible. This design, the massacre for a throne, we feel sure, existed
for a long time in Louis Bonaparte's mind. It was classed among the
possible events of this soul. It darted hither and thither like a
_larva_ in an aquarium, mingled with shadows, with doubts, with desires,
with expedients, with dreams of one knows not what Caesarian socialism,
like a Hydra dimly visible in a transparency of chaos. Hardly was he
aware that he was fostering this hideous idea. When he needed it, he
found it, armed and ready to serve him. His unfathomable brain had
darkly nourished it. Abysses are the nurseries of monsters.

Up to this formidable day of the 4th December, Louis Bonaparte did not
perhaps quite know himself. Those who studied this curious Imperial
animal did not believe him capable of such pure and simple ferocity.
They saw in him an indescribable mongrel, applying the talents of a
swindler to the dreams of an Empire, who, even when crowned, would be a
thief, who would say of a parricide, What roguery! Incapable of gaining
a footing on any height, even of infamy, always remaining half-way
uphill, a little above petty rascals, a little below great malefactors.
They believed him clever at effecting all that is done in gambling-hells
and in robbers' caves, but with this transposition, that he would cheat
in the caves, and that he would assassinate in the gambling-hells.

The massacre of the Boulevards suddenly unveiled this spirit. They saw it
such as it really was: the ridiculous nicknames "Big-beak," "Badinguet,"
vanished; they saw the bandit, they saw the true _contraffatto_ hidden
under the false Bonaparte.

There was a shudder! It was this then which this man held in reserve!

Apologies have been attempted, they could but fail. It is easy to praise
Bonaparte, for people have praised Dupin; but it is an exceedingly
complicated operation to cleanse him. What is to be done with the 4th
of December? How will that difficulty be surmounted? It is far more
troublesome to justify than to glorify; the sponge works with greater
difficulty than the censer; the panegyrists of the _coup d'etat_ have
lost their labor. Madame Sand herself, although