he
Prince-President, kneeling, smiling, expansive, bearing upon salvers
the keys of their towns, and on their faces the keys of their
consciences!

But imbeciles ('tis an old story) have always made a part of all
institutions, and are almost an institution of themselves; and as for
the prefects and magistrates, as for these adorers of every new regime,
insolent with, fortune and rapidity, they abound at all times. Let us
do justice to the regime of December; it can boast not only of such
partisans as these, but it has creatures and adherents peculiar to
itself; it has produced an altogether new race of notabilities.

Nations are never conscious of all the riches they possess in the
matter of knaves. Overturnings and subversions of this description
are necessary to bring them to light. Then the nations wonder at what
issues from the dust. It is splendid to contemplate. One whose shoes
and clothes and reputation were of a sort to attract all the dogs
of Europe in full cry, comes forth an ambassador. Another, who had
a glimpse of _Bicetre_ and _La Roquette_,[1] awakes a general, and
Grand Eagle of the Legion of Honour. Every adventurer assumes an
official costume, furnishes himself with a good pillow stuffed with
bank-notes, takes a sheet of white paper, and writes thereon: "End
of my adventures."--"You know So-and-So?"--"Yes, is he at the
galleys?"--"No, he's a minister."

[1] State prisons in Paris and Languedoc.

VIII

MENS AGITAT MOLEM

In the centre is the man--the man we have described; the man of Punic
faith, the fatal man, attacking the civilisation to arrive at power;
seeking, elsewhere than amongst the true people, one knows not what
ferocious popularity; cultivating the still uncivilized qualities of
the peasant and the soldier, endeavouring to succeed by appealing to
gross selfishness, to brutal passions, to newly awakened desires, to
excited appetites; something like a Prince Marat, with nearly the same
object, which in Marat was grand, and in Louis Bonaparte is little; the
man who kills, who transports, who banishes, who expels, who
proscribes, who despoils; this man with harassed gesture and glassy
eye, who walks with distracted air amid the horrible things he does,
like a sort of sinister somnambulist.

It has been said of Louis Bonaparte, whether with friendly intent or
otherwise,--for these strange beings have strange flatterers,--"He is a
dictator, he is a despot, nothing more."--