always in his service the
unforeseen, a mighty weapon, and encountering in himself no internal
obstacle in that which is known to other men as conscience, he pursues
his design, through no matter what, no matter how, and attains his
goal.

He draws back sometimes, not before the moral effect of his acts, but
before their material effect. The decrees of expulsion of eighty-four
representatives of the people, published on January 6 in the
_Moniteur_, revolted public sentiment. Fast bound as France was,
the shudder was perceptible. The 2nd of December was not long past;
there was danger in popular excitement. Louis Bonaparte understood
this. Next day a second decree of expulsion was to have appeared,
containing eight hundred names. Louis Bonaparte had the proof brought
to him from the _Moniteur_; the list occupied fourteen columns of
the official journal. He crumpled the proof, threw it into the fire,
and the decree did not appear. The proscriptions proceeded without a
decree.

In his enterprises, he needs aids and collaborators; he needs what he
calls "men." Diogenes sought them with a lantern, he seeks them with a
banknote in his hand. And finds them. There are certain sides of human
nature which produce a particular species of persons, of whom he is the
centre, and who group around him _ex necessitate_, in obedience to
that mysterious law of gravitation which regulates the moral being no
less than the cosmic atom. To undertake "the act of the 2nd of
December,"--to execute it, and to complete it, he needed these men, and
he had them. Now he is surrounded by them; these men form his retinue,
his court, mingling their radiance with his. At certain epochs of
history, there are pleiades of great men; at other epochs, there are
pleiades of vagabonds.

But do not confound the epoch, the moment of Louis Bonaparte, with the
19th century: the toadstool sprouts at the foot of the oak, but it is
not the oak.

M. Louis Bonaparte has succeeded. He has with him henceforth money,
speculation, the Bourse, the Bank, the counting-room, the strong-box,
and all those men who pass so readily from one side to the other, when
all they have to straddle is shame. He made of M. Changarnier a dupe,
of M. Thiers a stop-gap, of M. de Montalembert an accomplice, of power
a cavern, of the budget his farm. They are coining at the Mint a medal,
called the medal of the 2nd of December, in honour of the manner in
which he keeps his oaths. The frigat