s just the reverse. It is he who has asked you, and it
is you who have refused."

"Well, then--"

"They lie."

"What does it matter?"

He exclaimed,--

"Thus, you will have caused the Bonapartes to re-enter France, and you
will be banished from France by a Bonaparte!"[32]

"Who knows," said I, "if I have not committed a fault? This injustice is
perhaps a justice."

We were both silent. He resumed,--

"Could you bear exile?"

"I will try."

"Could you live without Paris?"

"I should have the ocean."

"You would then go to the seaside?"

"I think so."

"It is sad."

"It is grand."

There was another pause. He broke it.

"You do not know what exile is. I do know it. It is terrible. Assuredly,
I would not begin it again. Death is a bourne whence no one comes back,
exile is a place whither no one returns."

"If necessary," I said to him, "I will go, and I will return to it."

"Better die. To quit life is nothing, but to quit one's country--"

"Alas!" said I, "that is every thing."

"Well, then, why accept exile when it is in your power to avoid it? What
do you place above your country?"

"Conscience."

This answer made him thoughtful. However, he resumed.

"But on reflection your conscience will approve of what you will have
done."

"No."

"Why?"

"I have told you. Because my conscience is so constituted that it puts
nothing above itself. I feel it upon me as the headland can feel the
lighthouse which is upon it. All life is an abyss, and conscience
illuminates it around me."

"And I also," he exclaimed--and I affirm that nothing could be more
sincere or more loyal than his tone--"and I also feel and see my
conscience. It approves of what I am doing. I appear to be betraying
Louis; but I am really doing him a service. To save him from a crime is
to save him. I have tried every means. There only remains this one, to
arrest him. In coming to you, in acting as I do, I conspire at the same
time against him and for him, against his power, and for his honor. What
I am doing is right."

"It is true," I said to him. "You have a generous and a lofty aim."

And I resumed,--

"But our two duties are different. I could not hinder Louis Bonaparte
from committing a crime unless I committed one myself. I wish neither for
an Eighteenth Brumaire for him, nor for an Eighteenth Fructidor for
myself. I would rather be proscribed than be a proscriber. I have the
choice between two crimes, my crime an