Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOOK EIGHTH. CHAPTER I. PROGRESS INVOLVED IN THE COUP D'ETAT. Among us, democrats, the event of the 2d of December struck many sincere minds with stupor. It has disconcerted some, discouraged others, filled several with consternation. I have seen some who cried: Finis Polonue I As for myself, since at certain moments it is necessary to say I, and to speak before history as a witness, I proclaim that I have seen this event without apprehension. I say more, there are moments when in presence of the 2d of December I declare myself satisfied. When I succeed in abstracting myself from the present, when it happens to be possible for me to turn away my eyes for an instant from these crimes, from this blood poured out, from all these victims, from all the proscribed, from these hulks where the imprisoned have the rattle already in the throat, from those frightful galleys at Lambessa and Cayenne, where they die quickly, from that exile, in which they die slowly, from that vote, that oath, this immense heap of shame put upon France, and which goes on increasing every day? when, forgetting for a few moments the melancholythoughts which habitually beset my mind, I succeed in enclosing myself within the severe indifference of the politician, and in no longer considering the deed, but the consequences of the deed; then, among many disastrous results, no doubt, advance, real, considerable, enormous advance, appears to me, and in such a moment, if 1 am always one of those whom the zd of December makes indignant, I am no longer one of those whom it afflicts. The eye is fixed on certain aspects of the future. I am able to say to myself of it: The act is infamous, but the fact is good. They have tried to explain the inexplicable fact of the victory of the coup d'etat in a hundred …
