The orator continues: "And your paid clergy! and your office-holding bishops! On the day when a pretender shall have employed in such enterprises the government, the magistracy, and the army; on the day when all these inst.i.tutions shall drip with the blood shed by and for the traitor; when, placed between the man who has committed the crimes and G.o.d who orders an anathema to be launched against the criminal--do you know what these bishops of yours will do? They will prostrate themselves, not before G.o.d, but before man!"
Can you form any idea of the frenzied shouts and imprecations that would greet such words? Can you imagine the shouts, the apostrophes, the threats, the whole a.s.sembly rising _en ma.s.se_, the tribune escaladed and with difficulty guarded by the ushers! The orator has profaned every sanctified ark in succession, and he has ended by profaning the Holy of Holies, the clergy! And what does he mean by it all? What a medley of impossible and infamous hypotheses! Do you not hear Baroche growl, and Dupin thunder? The orator would be called to order, censured, fined, suspended from the Chamber for three days, like Pierre Leroux and emile de Girardin; who can tell, perhaps expelled, like Manuel.
And the next day, the indignant citizen would say: "That is well done!"
And from every quarter the journals devoted to order would shake their fist at the CALUMNIATOR. And in his own party, on his usual bench in the a.s.sembly, his best friends would forsake him, and say: "It is his own fault; he has gone too far; he has imagined chimeras and absurdities."
And after this generous and heroic effort, it would be found that the four inst.i.tutions that have been attacked were more venerable and impeccable than ever, and that the question, instead of advancing, had receded.
V
WHAT PROVIDENCE HAS DONE
But Providence,--Providence goes about it differently. It places the thing luminously before your eyes, and says, "Behold!"
A man arrives some fine morning,--and such a man! The first comer, the last comer, without past, without future, without genius, without renown, without prestige. Is he an adventurer? Is he a prince? This man has his hands full of money, of bank-notes, of railroad shares, of offices, of decorations, of sinecures; this man stoops down to the office-holders, and says, "Office-holders, betray your trust!"
The office-holders betray their trust.
What, all? without one exception?
Yes, all!
He turns to the generals, and says: "Generals, ma.s.sacre."
And the generals ma.s.sacre.
He turns towards the irremovable judges, and says: "Magistrates, I shatter the Const.i.tution, I commit perjury, I dissolve the sovereign a.s.sembly, I arrest the inviolate members, I plunder the public treasury, I sequester, I confiscate, I banish those who displease me, I transport people according to my fancy, I shoot down without summons to surrender, I execute without trial, I commit all that men are agreed in calling crime, I outrage all that men are agreed in calling right; behold the laws--they are under my feet."
"We will pretend not to see any thing," say the magistrates.
"You are insolent," replies the providential man. "To turn your eyes away is to insult me. I propose that you shall a.s.sist me. Judges, you are going to congratulate me to-day, me who am force and crime; and to-morrow, those who have resisted me, those who are honor, right, and law, them you will try,--and you will condemn them."
These irremovable judges kiss his boot, and set about investigating _l"affaire des troubles_.
They swear fidelity to him, to boot.
Then he perceives, in a corner, the clergy, endowed, gold-laced, with cross and cope and mitre, and he says:--
"Ah, you are there, Archbishop! Come here. Just bless all this for me."
And the Archbishop chants his _Magnificat_.
VI
WHAT THE MINISTERS, ARMY, MAGISTRACY, AND CLERGY HAVE DONE
Oh! what a striking thing and how instructive! "_Erudimini_," Bossuet would say.
The Ministers fancied that they were dissolving the a.s.sembly; they dissolved the government.
The soldiers fired on the army and killed it.
The judges fancied that they were trying and convicting innocent persons; they tried and convicted the irremovable magistracy.
The priests thought they were chanting hosannahs upon Louis Bonaparte; they chanted a _De profundis_ upon the clergy.
VII
THE FORM OF THE GOVERNMENT OF G.o.d
When G.o.d desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself.
Every bad inst.i.tution of this world ends by suicide.
When they have weighed sufficiently long upon men, Providence, like the sultan to his viziers, sends them the bowstring by a mute, and they execute themselves.
Louis Bonaparte is the mute of Providence.
CONCLUSION--PART FIRST
PETTINESS OF THE MASTER--ABJECTNESS OF THE SITUATION
I
Never fear, History has him in its grip.
If perchance it flatters the self-love of M. Bonaparte to be seized by history, if perchance, and truly one would imagine so, he cherishes any illusion as to his value as a political miscreant, let him divest himself of it.
Let him not imagine, because he has piled up horror on horror, that he will ever raise himself to the elevation of the great historical bandits. We have been wrong, perhaps, in some pages of this book, here and there, to couple him with those men. No, although he has committed enormous crimes, he will remain paltry. He will never be other than the nocturnal strangler of liberty; he will never be other than the man who intoxicated his soldiers, not with glory, like the first Napoleon, but with wine; he will never be other than the pygmy tyrant of a great people. Grandeur, even in infamy, is utterly inconsistent with the calibre of the man. As dictator, he is a buffoon; let him make himself emperor, he will be grotesque. That will finish him. His destiny is to make mankind shrug their shoulders. Will he be less severely punished for that reason? Not at all. Contempt does not, in his case, mitigate anger; he will be hideous, and he will remain ridiculous. That is all.
History laughs and crushes.