body rejoins: "Oh, yes, elections! You talk very glibly about them.
But what about the 'red chamber' which would have sprung from these
elections."

Did they not announce that the Constitution of 1848 would prove a "red
chamber?" Red chambers, red hobgoblins, all such predictions are of
equal value. Those who wave such phantasmagorias on the end of a stick
before the terrified populace know well what they are doing, and laugh
behind the ghastly rag they wave. Beneath the long scarlet robe of the
phantom, to which had been given the name of 1852, we see the stout
boots of the _coup d'etat_.

IV

THE JACQUERIE

Meanwhile, after the 2nd of December, the crime being committed, it was
imperative to mislead public opinion. The _coup d'etat_ began to
shriek about the Jacquerie, like the assassin who cried: "Stop thief!"

We may add, that a _Jacquerie_ had been promised, and that M. Bonaparte
could not break all his promises at once without some inconvenience.
What but the Jacquerie was the red spectre? Some reality must be
imparted to that spectre: one cannot suddenly burst out laughing in the
face of a whole people and say: "It was nothing! I only kept you in
fear of yourselves."

Consequently there was a _Jacquerie_. The promises of the play-bill
were observed.

The imaginations of his entourage gave themselves a free rein; that old
bugbear Mother Goose was resuscitated, and many a child, on reading the
newspaper, might have recognized the ogre of Goodman Perrault in the
disguise of a socialist; they surmised, they invented; the press being
suppressed, it was quite easy; it is easy to lie when the tongue of
contradiction has been torn out beforehand.

They exclaimed: "Citizens, be on your guard! without us you were lost.
We shot you, but that was for your good. Behold, the Lollards were at
your gates, the Anabaptists were scaling your walls, the Hussites were
knocking at your window-blinds, the lean and hungry were climbing your
staircases, the empty-bellied coveted your dinner. Be on your guard!
Have not some of your good women been outraged?"

They gave the floor to one of the principal writers in _La Patrie_, one
Froissard.

"I dare not write or describe the horrible and improper things they did
to the ladies. But among other disorderly and villainous injuries, they
killed a chevalier and put a spit through him, and turned him before
the fire, and roasted him before the wife and her children. After te