n it, and live as usual. Society goes on, and plenty
of worthy folk are well pleased with this state of things. Why do you
want to change it, to put an end to it? Don't deceive yourselves, it is
all solid, all firm; it is the present and the future."

We are in Russia. The Neva is frozen over. Houses are built on the ice,
and heavy chariots roll over it. It is no longer water, but rock. The
people go to and fro upon this marble which was once a river. A town is
run up, streets are marked out, shops opened; people buy, sell, eat,
drink, sleep, light fires on what once was water. You can do whatever
you please there. Fear nothing. Laugh, dance; it is more solid than
_terra firma_. Why, it rings beneath the foot, like granite. Long
live winter! Long live the ice! This will last till doomsday! And look
at the sky: is it day? is it night? what is it? A pale, misty light
steals over the snow; one would say that the sun is dying!

No, thou art not dying, O liberty! One of these days, at the moment
when thou art least expected, at the very hour when they shall have
most utterly forgotten thee, thou wilt rise!--O dazzling vision! the
star-like face will suddenly be seen issuing from the earth,
resplendent on the horizon! Over all that snow, over all that ice, over
that hard, white plain, over that water become rock, over all that
wretched winter, thou wilt cast thy arrow of gold, thy ardent and
effulgent ray! light, heat, life! And then, listen! hear you that dull
sound? hear you that crashing noise, all-pervading and formidable? 'Tis
the breaking up of the ice! 'tis the melting of the Neva! 'tis the
river resuming its course! 'tis the water, living, joyous, and
terrible, heaving up the hideous, dead ice, and crushing it.--'Twas
granite, said you; see, it splinters like glass! 'tis the breaking up
of the ice, I tell you: 'tis the truth returning, 'tis progress
recommencing, 'tis mankind resuming its march, and uprooting, carrying
off, mingling, crushing and drowning in its waves, like the wretched
furniture of a submerged hovel, not only the brand-new empire of Louis
Bonaparte, but all the structures and all the work of the eternal
antique despotism! Look on these things as they are passing. They are
vanishing for ever. You will never behold them again. That book, half
submerged, is the old code of iniquity; that sinking framework is the
throne; that other framework, floating off, is the scaffold!

And for this immense engulfm