t he is Lycurgus! They have incarnated in him the people, the
nation, the state, the law! and for ten years! What! I, a citizen,
vote, not only for my own dispossession, my own forfeiture, my own
abdication, but for the abdication of universal suffrage for ten years,
by the coming generations, over whom I have no right, over whom you, an
usurper, force me to usurp power, which, by the way, be it said in
passing, would suffice to nullify that monstrous ballot, if all
conceivable nullities were not already piled, heaped and welded upon
it. What! is that what you would have me do? You make me vote that all
is finished, that nothing remains, that the people is a slave! What!
you say to me: "Since you are sovereign, you shall give yourself a
master; since you are France, you shall become Haiti!" What an
abominable farce!

Such is the vote of the 20th of December,--that sanction, as M. de
Morny says; that absolution, as M. Bonaparte says.

Assuredly, a short time hence,--in a year, in a month, perhaps in a
week,--when all that we now see has vanished, men will be ashamed of
having, if only for an instant, bestowed upon that infamous semblance
of a ballot, which they call the ballot of seven million five hundred
thousand votes, the honour of discussing it. Yet it is the only basis,
the only support, the only rampart of this prodigious power of M.
Bonaparte. This vote is the excuse of cowards, this vote is the buckler
of dishonoured consciences. Generals, magistrates, bishops, all crimes,
all prevarications, all degrees of complicity, seek refuge for their
ignominy behind this vote. France has spoken, say they: _vox populi,
vox Dei_, universal suffrage has voted; everything is covered by a
ballot.--_That_ a vote! _that_ a ballot? One spits on it, and passes
by.

Third. _The figures must be accurate._ I admire that figure: 7,500,000!
It must have had a fine effect, through the fog of the 1st of January,
in letters of gold, three feet high, on the portal of Notre-Dame.

I admire that figure. Do you know why? Because I consider it humble.
Seven million five hundred thousand. Why seven million five hundred
thousand? It is not many. No one refused M. Bonaparte full measure.
After what he had done on the 2nd of December, he was entitled to
something better than that. Tell us, who played him that trick? Who
prevented him from putting down eight millions, or ten millions,--a
good round sum? As for myself, I was quite disappointed i