d to burn Paris, and to Louis Philippe,
who would not shed the people's blood, and he must have done himself
the justice to admit that he is a great politician. A few days later,
General T----, formerly in the service of one of the sons of King Louis
Philippe, came to the Elysee. As soon as Louis Bonaparte caught sight
of him, the comparison we have just pointed out suggesting itself to
him, he cried out to the general, exultingly: "Well?"

Louis Bonaparte is in very truth the man who said to one of his former
ministers, who was our own informant: "_Had I been Charles X, and had
I, during the days of July, caught Laffitte, Benjamin Constant, and
Lafayette, I would have had them shot like dogs._"

On the 4th of December, Louis Bonaparte would have been dragged that
very night from the Elysee, and the law would have prevailed, had he
been one of those men who recoil before a massacre. Fortunately for
him, he had no such scruples. What signified a few dead bodies, more or
less? Nonsense! kill! kill at random! cut them down! shoot, cannonade,
crush, smash! Strike terror for me into this hateful city of Paris! The
_coup d'etat_ was in a bad way; this great homicide restored its
spirit. Louis Bonaparte had nearly ruined himself by his felony; he
saved himself by his ferocity. Had he been only a Faliero, it was all
over with him; fortunately he was a Caesar Borgia. He plunged with his
crime into a river of gore; one less culpable would have sunk, he swam
across. Such was his success as it is called. He is now on the other
bank, striving to wipe himself dry, dripping with the blood which he
mistakes for the purple, and demanding the Empire.

II

SEQUEL OF CRIMES

Such a man is this malefactor!

And shall we not applaud thee, O Truth! when, in the eyes of Europe and
of the world, before the people, in the face of God, while he appealed
to honour, the sanctity of an oath, faith, religion, the sacredness of
human life, the law, the generosity of all hearts, wives, sisters,
mothers, civilization, liberty, the republic, France; before his
valets, his Senate and his Council of State; before his generals, his
priests, and his police agents,--thou who representest the people (for
the people is truth); thou who representest intelligence (for
intelligence is enlightenment); thou who representest humanity (for
humanity is reason); in the name of the enthralled people, in the name
of exiled intelligence, in the name of outra