after midnight, without lights, without processions, without prayers,
without priests, by stealth. Families were enjoined not to weep too
loud.

The massacre along the boulevards was only a part; it was followed by
the summary fusillades, the secret executions.

One of the witnesses whom we have questioned asked a major in the
gendarmerie mobile, who had distinguished himself in these butcheries:
"Come, tell us the figure? Was it four hundred?" The man shrugged his
shoulders. "Was it six hundred?" The man shook his head. "Eight
hundred?"--"Say twelve hundred," said the officer, "and you will fall
short."

At this present hour nobody knows exactly what the 2nd of December was,
what it did, what it dared, whom it killed, whom it buried. The very
morning of the crime, the newspaper offices were placed under seal,
free speech was suppressed, by Louis Bonaparte, that man of silence and
darkness. On the 2nd, the 3rd, the 4th, the 5th, and ever since, Truth
has been taken by the throat and strangled just as she was about to
speak. She could not even utter a cry. He has deepened the gloom about
his ambuscade and he has succeeded in part. Let history strive as she
may, the 2nd of December will, perhaps, continue involved, for a long
time to come, in a sort of ghastly twilight. It is a crime made up of
audacity and darkness; here it shows itself impudently in broad
daylight; there it skulks away into the mist. Hideous and double-faced
effrontery, which conceals no one knows what monstrosities beneath its
cloak.

But these glimpses are sufficient. There is a certain side of the 2nd
of December where all is dark; but, within that darkness, graves are
visible.

Beneath this great enormity a host of crimes may be vaguely
distinguished. Such is the behest of Providence; there are compulsions
linked to treason. You are a perjurer! You violate your oaths! You
trample upon law and justice! Well! take a rope, for you will be
compelled to strangle; take a dagger, for you will be compelled to
stab; take a club, for you will be compelled to strike; take shadow and
darkness, for you will be compelled to hide yourself. One crime brings
on another; there is a logical consistency in horror. There is no
halting, no middle course. Go on! do this first; good! Now do that,
then this again; and so for ever! The law is like the veil of the
Temple: once rent, it is rent from top to bottom.

Yes, we say it again, in what has been called "the ac