confederates are waiting in the street to thrust you
back into the midst of the flames again. It is in vain that you have
written the following letter, a chef-d'oeuvre in its way, to the
president of

"CITIZEN PRESIDENT,--If I had not been detained at the Ministry of
War on the day when the election took place, I should have voted
with the minority of the Commune. I think that the majority, for
this once, is in the wrong."

"For this once" is polite.

"I doubt if she will ever retrieve her error."

If the Commune were to retrace its steps at each error it made, it
would advance slowly.

"I think that the elected have not the right of replacing the
electors. I think that the representatives have not the right of
taking the place of the sovereign power. I think that the Commune
cannot create a single one of its own members, neither make them nor
unmake them; and, therefore, that it cannot of itself furnish that
which is wanted to legalise their nominations'."

Oh! Monsieur Felix Pyat, legality is strangely out of fashion, and it is
well for Versailles that it is so.

"I think also, seeing that the war has changed the population...."

Yes; the war has changed the population, if not in the way you
understand it, at least in this sense, that a great many reasonable
people have gone mad, and that many--ah! how many?--are now dead.

"I think that it was more just to change the law than to violate it.
The ballot gave birth to the Commune, and in completing itself
without it, the Commune commits suicide. I will not be an accomplice
in the fault."

We understand that; it is quite enough to be an accomplice in the crime.

"I am so convinced of this truth, that if the Commune persist in
what I call an usurpation of the elective power, I could not
reconcile the respect due to the rote of the majority with the
respect due to my own conscience; I shall therefore be obliged, much
to my regret, to give in my resignation to the Commune before the
victory.

"_Salut et Fraternite_.

"FELIX PYAT."

"Before the victory" is exquisitely comic! But, carried away by the
desire of exhibiting the wit of which he is master, Monsieur Felix Pyat
fails to perceive that his irony is a little too transparent, that
"before the victory" evidently meant "before the defeat," and that
consequently, without taking into account the exc