the case of the printer, into the composing-stick, into the leaden
type, into the stereotype, into the lithograph, into the drawing, upon
the stage, into the street-show, into the mouth of the actor, into the
copy-book of the schoolmaster, into the hawker's pack; to hold out to
each man, for faith, for law, for aim in life, and for God, his selfish
interest; to say to nations: "Eat and think no more;" to take man from
the brain, and put him in the belly; to extinguish individual initiative,
local life, national impulse, all those deep-rooted instincts which
impel man to that which is right; to annihilate that _ego_ of nations
which is called the fatherland; to destroy nationality among
partitioned and dismembered peoples, constitutions in constitutional
states, the republic in France, and liberty everywhere; to plant the
foot everywhere upon human effort.

In one word, to close that abyss which is called Progress.

Such was the plan, vast, enormous, European, which no one conceived,
for not one of those men of the old world had had genius for it, but
which all followed. As for the plan in itself, as for that
all-embracing idea of universal repression, whence came it? who could
tell? It was seen in the air. It appeared in the past. It enlightened
certain souls, it pointed to certain routes. It was a gleam issuing
from the tomb of Machiavelii.

At certain moments of human history, from the things which are plotted
and the things which are done, it would seem that all the old demons of
humanity, Louis XI, Philip II, Catherine de Medicis, the Duke of Alva,
Torquemada, are somewhere or other in a corner, seated around a table,
and taking counsel together.

We look, we search, and instead of the colossi, we find abortions.
Where we expected to see the Duke of Alva, we find Schwartzenberg;
where we expected to see Torquemada we find Veuillot. The old European
despotism continues its march, with these little men, and goes on and
on; it resembles the Czar Peter when travelling:--"_We relay with
what we can find," he wrote; "_when we had no more Tartar horses, we
took donkeys." To attain this object, the repression of everything and
everybody, it was necessary to pursue an obscure, tortuous, rugged,
difficult path; they pursued it. Some of those who entered it, knew
what they were doing.

Parties are kept alive by watchwords; those men, those ringleaders,
whom 1848 frightened and assembled, had, as we have said above, adopte