ey tell one
another their sufferings. He who has money shares it with those who
have none, he who has firmness imparts it to those who lack it. They
exchange recollections, aspirations, hopes. They turn, their arms
extended in the darkness towards those they have left behind. Oh! how
happy they who think no more of us! Every man suffers and at times
waxes wroth. The names of all the executioners are engraven in the
memory of all. Each has something to curse,--Mazas, the hulk, the
dungeon, the informer who betrayed, the spy who watched, the gendarme
who arrested him, Lambessa, where one has a friend, Cayenne, where one
has a brother; but there is one thing that is blessed by all, and that
is thou, France!

Oh! a complaint, a word against thee, France! No! no! one's country is
never so deeply fixed in the heart as when one is torn from it by
exile.

They will do their whole duty, with a tranquil brow and unshaken
perseverance. Never to see thee again is their sorrow, never to forget
thee their joy.

Ah, what grief! And after eight months it is in vain that we say to
ourselves that these things are so; it is in vain that we look around
us and see the spire of Saint-Michael's instead of the Pantheon, and
Saint-Gudule instead of Notre-Dame,--we cannot believe it.

It is, however, true, it cannot be denied, we must admit it, we must
acknowledge it, even though we expire of humiliation and despair,--that
which is lying there, on the ground, is the nineteenth century, is
France!

And it is this Bonaparte who has caused all this ruin!

And it is in the very centre of the greatest nation upon earth! it is
in the midst of the greatest century of all history, that this man has
suddenly risen and has triumphed! To seize upon France as his prey,
great Heaven! What the lion would not dare to do, the ape has done!
what the eagle would have dreaded to seize in his talons, the parrot
has taken in his claws! What! Louis XI failed! Richelieu destroyed
himself in the attempt! Even Napoleon was unequal to it! In a single
day, between night and morning, the absurd became the possible! All
that was axiomatic has become chimerical. All that was false has become
living fact. What! the most brilliant concourse of men! the most
magnificent movements of ideas! the most formidable sequence of events!
a thing that no Titian could have controlled, that no Hercules could
have turned aside,--the human flood in full course, the French wave
sweep