when it rises, or _vice versa_, if it be a beast of night. The brute
has only an obscure sort of _ego_, illumined by no moral light. Its
entire law, I repeat, is instinct: instinct, a sort of railway, along
which inevitable nature impels the brute. No liberty, therefore, no
responsibility, and consequently no future life. The brute does neither
evil nor good; it is wholly ignorant. Even the tiger is innocent.

If, perchance, you were innocent as the tiger!

At certain moments one is tempted to believe that, having no warning
voice within, any more than the tiger, you have no more sense of
responsibility.

Really, at times I pity you. Who knows? perhaps after all, you are only
a miserable blind force!

Louis Bonaparte, you have not the notion of good and evil. You are,
perhaps, the only man of all mankind who has not that notion. This
gives you a start over the human race. Yes, you are formidable. It is
that which constitutes your genius, it is said; I admit that, at all
events, it is that which at this moment constitutes your power.

But do you know what results from this sort of power? Possession, yes;
right, no.

Crime essays to deceive history as to its true name; it says, "I am
success."--Thou art crime!

You are crowned and masked. Down with the mask! Down with the crown!

Ah! you are wasting your trouble, you are wasting your appeals to the
people, your plebiscites, your ballots, your footings, your executive
committees proclaiming the sum total, your red or green banners, with
these figures in gold paper,--7,500,000! You will derive no advantage
from this elaborate _mise-en-scene_. There are things about which
universal sentiment is not to be gulled. The human race, taken as a
whole, is an honest man.

Even by those about you you are judged. There is not one of your
domestics, whether in gold lace or in embroidered coat, valet of the
stable, or valet of the Senate, who does not say beneath his breath
that which I say aloud. What I proclaim, they whisper; that is the only
difference. You are omnipotent, they bend the knee, that is all. They
salute you, their brows burning with shame.

They feel that they are base, but they know that you are infamous.

Come, since you are by way of hunting those whom you call "the rebels
of December," since it is on them you are setting your hounds, since
you have instituted a Maupas, and created a ministry of police
specially for that purpose, I denounce to you that