Imperial functionary, were ready
passports to social recognition. The landmarks between virtue and vice
were obliterated. The Court lady smiled in half-recognition on the
courtezan, and paid her homage by endeavouring to imitate her dress and
her manners. Cardsharpers and stockjobbers, disreputable adventurers and
public functionaries were intimate friends. No one, able to insult
modest industry by lavish ostentation, was asked how he had acquired his
wealth. Honour and honesty were prejudices of the past. What has been
the consequence? It is a comment upon despotism, which I hope will not
be lost upon those who extol the advantages of personal government, and
who would sacrifice the liberty of all to the concentrated energy of
one. The armies of France have been scattered to the winds; the
Emperor, who knew not even how a Caesar should die, is a prisoner; his
creatures are enjoying their booty in ignoble ease, not daring even to
fight for the country which they have betrayed. The gay crowd has taken
to itself wings; an emasculated bourgeoisie, grown rich upon fashionable
follies, and a mob of working men, unused to arms, and distrustful even
of their own leaders, are cowering beneath the ramparts of Paris,
opposing frantic boasts, pitiful lamentations, unskilled valour, to the
stern discipline of the legions of Germany, whose iron grasp is
contracting closer and closer every day round the vaunted capital of
modern civilization. You know better than we do what is passing in the
provinces, but I can answer for it that the Parisians, low as they have
fallen, are not so lost to every impulse of honour as to be ready to
welcome back in triumph the prime cause of their degradation, the man of
December and of Sedan. Titania, in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_,
idealizes the weaver, and invests him with every noble attribute, and
then as soon as she regains her senses, turns from him with disgust and
exclaims, "Oh, how mine eyes do loathe thee now." So it was and so it is
with Paris and Napoleon, "None so poor to do him honour now."

The Government is daily becoming more and more military, and the
Parisian Deputies are becoming little more than lay figures. M.
Gambetta, the most energetic of them, has left for the provinces. MM.
Jules Favre, Picard, and Pelletan are almost forgotten. Rochefort
devotes himself to the barricades, and M. Dorian, a hard-headed
manufacturer, is occupying himself in stimulating the manufacture of
cann