t of the 2nd of
December," one meets with crime at every depth. Perjury floats on the
surface, murder lies at the bottom. Partial homicides, wholesale
butcheries, shooting in open day, fusillades by night; a steam of blood
rises from every part of the _coup d'etat_.

Search in the common grave of the churchyards, search beneath the
street pavement, beneath the sloping banks of the Champ-de-Mars,
beneath the trees of the public gardens, in the bed of the Seine!

But few revelations. That is easily understood. Bonaparte has the
satanic art of binding to himself a crowd of miserable officials by I
know not what terrible universal complicity. The stamped papers of the
magistrates, the desks of the registrars, the cartridge-boxes of the
soldiers, the prayers of the priests, are his accomplices. He has cast
his crime about him like a network, and prefects, mayors, judges,
officers, and soldiers are caught therein. Complicity descends from
the general to the corporal, and ascends from the corporal to the
president. The _sergent-de-ville_ and the minister feel that they are
equally implicated. The gendarme whose pistol has pressed against the
ear of some unfortunate, and whose uniform has been splashed with human
brains, feels as guilty as his colonel. Above, cruel men gave orders
which savage men executed below. Savagery keeps the secret of cruelty.
Hence this hideous silence.

There is even emulation and rivalry between this savagery and this
atrocity; what escaped the one was seized upon by the other. The future
will refuse to credit these prodigious excesses. A workman was crossing
the Pont au Change, some gendarmes mobiles stopped him; they smelt his
hands. "He smells of powder," said a gendarme. They shot the workman;
his body was pierced by four balls. "Throw him into the stream," cries
the sergeant. The gendarmes take him by the neck and heels and hurl him
over the bridge. Shot, and then drowned, the man floats down the river.
However, he was not dead; the icy river revived him; but he was unable
to move, his blood flowed into the water from four holes; but being
held up by his blouse, he struck against an arch of one of the bridges.
There some lightermen discovered him, picked him up, and carried him to
the hospital; he recovered; he left the place. The next day he was
arrested, and brought before a court-martial. Rejected by death, he was
reclaimed by Louis Bonaparte. This man is now at Lambessa.

What the Champ-d