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creep behind him and lick his heels. He takes up or drops the bishops and cardinals; he tramples upon justice which curses him, and upon judges who worship him. Thirty eager newspaper correspondents inform the world that he has frowned, and every electric wire quivers if he raises his little finger. Around him is heard the clanking of the sabre and the roll of the drum. He is seated in the shadow of eagles, begirt by ramparts and bayonets. Free people tremble and conceal their liberty lest he should rob them of it. The great American Republic even hesitates before him, and dares not withdraw her ambassador. Kings look at him with a smile from the midst of their armies, though their hearts be full of dread. Where will he begin? Belgium, Switzerland, or Piedmont?

Europe awaits his invasion. He is able to do as he wishes, and he dreams of impossibilities. Well, this master, this triumphant conqueror, this vanquisher, this dictator, this emperor, this all-powerful man, one lonely man, robbed and ruined, dares to rise up and attack. Louis Napoleon has ten thousand cannons and five hundred thousand soldiers; I have but a pen and a bottle of ink, I am a mere nothing, a grain of dust, a shadow, an exile without a home, a vagrant without even a passport; but I have at my side two mighty auxiliaries,--God, who is invincible, and Truth, which is immortal.

Certainly, Providence might have chosen a more illustrious champion for this duel to the death; some stronger athlete--but what matters the man when it is the cause that fights? However it may be, it is good for the world to gaze upon this spectacle. For what is it but intelligence striking against brute force? I have but one stone for my sling; but it is a good one, for its name is Justice!

I am attacking Louis Bonaparte when he is at the height and zenith of his power, at the hour when all bend before him. All the better; this is what suits me best.

Yes, I attack Louis Bonaparte; I attack him openly, before all the world. I attack him before God and man. I attack him boldly and recklessly for love of the people and for love of France. He is going to be an emperor. Let him be one; but let him remember that, though you may secure an empire, you cannot secure an easy conscience!

This is the man by whom France is governed! Governed, do I say? -possessed in supreme and sovereign sway! And every day, and every morning, by his decrees, by his messages, by all the incredible drivel which he parades in the Moniteur, this emigrant, who knows not France, teaches France her lesson; and this ruffian tells France he has saved her! And from whom? From herself! Before him, Providence committed only follies; God was waiting for him to reduce everything to order; at

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last he has come! For thirty-six years there had been in France all sorts of pernicious things,-the tribune, a vociferous thing; the press, an obstreperous thing; thought, an insolent thing; and liberty, the most crying abuse of all. But he came, and for the tribune he has substituted the Senate; for the press, the censorship; for thought, imbecility; and for liberty, the sabre; and by the sabre and the Senate, by imbecility and censorship, France is saved.

Saved, bravo! And from whom, I repeat? From herself. For what has this France of ours, if you please? A herd of marauders and thieves; of anarchists, assassins, and demagogues. She had to be manacled, had this mad woman, France; and it is Monsieur Bonaparte Louis who puts the handcuffs on her. Now she is in a dungeon, on a diet of bread and water, punished, humiliated, garroted, safely cared for. Be not disturbed, Monsieur Bonaparte, a policeman stationed at the Elysee is answerable for her in Europe. He makes it his business to be so; this wretched France is in the strait-jacket, and if she stirs-Ah, what is this spectacle before our eyes? Is it a dream? Is it a nightmare? On one side a nation, the first of nations, and on the other, a man, the last of men; and this is what this man does to this nation. What! he tramples her under his feet, he laughs in her face, he mocks and taunts her, he disowns, insults, and flouts her! What! he says, "I alone am worthy of consideration!" What! in this land of France, where none would dare to slap the face of his fellow, this man nation? Oh, the abominable shame of it all! Bonaparte spits, every face must be wiped ! tell me it will last! No! No! by every drop in every vein, no! It shall not last! Ah, if this did last, it would be in very truth because there would no longer be a God in heaven, nor a France on earth!

can slap the face of the Every time that Monsieur And this can last! and you

THE HEROISM OF VOLTAIRE

[On the centennial anniversary of Voltaire's death, May 30, 1878, Hugo made at Paris the following eloquent address.]

One hundred years ago to-day a man died! He died immortal, laden with years, with labors, and with the most illustrious and formidable of responsibilities-the responsibility of the human conscience informed and corrected. He departed amid the curses of the past and the blessings of the future-and these are the two superb forms of glory!-dying amid the acclamations of his comtemporaries and of posterity, on the one hand, and on the other with the hootings and hatreds bestowed by the implacable past on those who combat it. He was more than a man-he was an epoch! He had done his work; he had fulfilled his mission evidently

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. chosen for him by the Supreme Will, which manifests itself as visibly in the laws of destiny as in the laws of nature. The eighty-four years he had lived bridge over the interval between the apogee of the Monarchy and the dawn of the Revolution. At his birth, Louis XIV. still reigned; at his death Louis XVI. had already mounted the throne; so that his cradle saw the last rays of the great throne and his coffin the first beams from the great abyss. .

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The court was full of festivities; Versailles was radiant; Paris was ignorant; and meanwhile, through religious ferocity, judges killed an old man on the wheel and tore out a child's tongue for a song. Confronted by this frivolous and dismal society, Voltaire alone, sensible of all the forces marshaled against him-court, nobility, finance; that unconscious power, the blind multitude; that terrible magistracy, so oppressive for the subject, so docile for the master, crushing and flattering, kneeling on the people before the king; that clergy, a sinister medley of hypocrisy and fanaticism-Voltaire alone declared war against this coalition of all social iniquities against that great and formidable world. He accepted battle with it. What was his weapon? That which hath the lightness of the wind and the force of a thunderbolt--a pen. With that weapon Voltaire fought, and with that he conquered! Let us salute that memory! He conquered! He waged a splendid warfare-the war of one alone against all; the grand war of mind against matter, of reason against prejudice; a war for the just against the unjust, for the oppressed against the oppressor, the war of goodness, the war of kindness! He had the tenderness of a woman and the anger of a hero. His was a great mind and an immense heart. He conquered the old code, the ancient dogma! He conquered the feudal lord, the Gothic judge, the Roman priest. He bestowed on the populace the dignity of the people! He taught, pacified, civilized ! He fought for the Sirven and Montbailly as for Calas and Labarre. Regardless of menaces, insults, persecutions, calumny, exile, he was indefatigable and imovable. He overcame violence by a smile, despotism by sarcasm, infallibility by irony, obstinacy by perseverance, ignorance by truth!

LEON MICHEL GAMBETTA (1838-1882)

THE ADVOCATE OF FRENCH DEMOCRACY

IN

N October, 1871, Leon Gambetta, one of the makers of the new French Republic, made a most sensational escape from Paris, then closely invested by the German army. He passed not through, but over the lines, sailing through the air in a balloon, and landing far beyond the reach of the foes of France. At his call, all southern France rose in arms, and for five months he was the Dictator of his country. Army after army rose from farm and city and fought the foes of France, and even after Paris had fallen, he demanded that the war should go on to the bitter end. His colleagues failing to support him, he resigned his leadersdip and retired into Spain.

Before the war with Germany, Gambetta had been a member of the Paris bar, and a deputy of advanced liberal opinions, representing the "Irreconcilables" of Marseilles and Belleville. In the new Parliament he became the chief of the advanced Republicans, and later came into determined conflict with those who sought to restore the monarchy. The contest between him and Marshal MacMahon led to his being imprisoned and fined for libel, but it ended in the resignation of MacMahon and the triumph of Gambetta. He subsequently became premier, but resigned in 1882, and soon after died from an accidental wound in the hand from a revolver.

THE REGENERATION OF FRANCE

[Gambetta was an orator of fine powers, and the "ablest French Republican of the nineteenth century." Keeping alive his faith in France and its powers of recuperation, after the terrible losses of the war with Germany, he sought to arouse a like feeling in the people, calling on the peasantry and the educated alike to arouse for the regeneration of their beloved native land. We offer a translation of one of his appeals for this purpose.]

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The peasantry is intellectually several centuries behind the enlightened and educated classes of the country. Yes, the distance is immense between them and us, who have received a classical or scientific education-even the imperfect one of our day. We have learned to read our history, to speak our language, while (a cruel thing to say) so many of our countrymen can only babble! Ah! that peasant, bound to the tillage of the soil, who bravely carries the burden of his day, with no other consolation than that of leaving to his children the paternal fields, perhaps increased an acre in extent! All his passions, joys, fears, are concentrated on the fate of his patrimony. Of the external world, of the society in which he lives, he apprehends but legends and rumors; he is the prey of the cunning and the fraudulent. He strikes, without knowing it, the bosom of the Revolution, his benefactress; he gives loyally his taxes and his blood to a society for which he feels fear as much as respect. But there his role ends, and if you speak to him of principles, he knows nothing of them.

It is to the peasantry, then, that we must address ourselves. They are the ones we must raise and instruct. The epithets the parties have bandied of "rurality" and "rural chamber" must not be the cause of injustice. It is to be wished that there were a "rural chamber," in the profound and true sense of the term, for it is not with hobble-de-hoys a "rural chamber" can be made, but with enlightened and free peasants able to represent themselves. And instead of being the cause of raillery, this reproach of a "rural chamber" would be a tribute rendered to the progress of the civilization of the masses. This new social force could be utilized for the general welfare. Unfortunately, we have not yet reached that point, and this progress will be denied us as long as the French democracy fail to demonstrate that if we would remake our country, if we would return her to her grandeur, her power, and her genius, it is the vital interest of her superior classes to elevate, to emancipate this people of workers, who hold in reserve a force still virgin and able to develop inexhaustible treasures of activity and aptitude. We must learn and then teach the peasant what he owes to society and what he has the right to ask of her.

On the day when it will be well understood that we have no grander or more pressing work; that we should put aside and postpone all other reforms; that we have but one task, the instruction of the people, the diffusion of education, the encouragement of science,-on that day a great step will have been taken in your regeneration. But our action needs to be a double one, that it may bear upon the body as well as the mind. To be exact, each man should be intelligent, trained not only to think, read, reason, but able also to act, to fight. Everywhere beside the teacher we

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