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Serious reflections arise in the presence of all the details of the great
crime which this book is designed to relate. Every honest man who sets
himself face to face with the coup d'état of Louis Bonaparte hears
nothing but a tumult of indignant thoughts in his conscience. Whoever
reads our work to the end will assuredly not credit us with the intention
of extenuating this monstrous deed. Nevertheless, as the deep logic of
actions ought always to be italicized by the historian, it is necessary
here to call to mind and to repeat, even to satiety, that apart from the
members of the Left, of whom a very small number were present, and whom
we have mentioned by name, the three hundred Representatives who thus
defiled before the eyes of the crowd, constituted the old Royalists and
reactionary majority of the Assembly. If it were possible to forget,
that--whatever were their errors, whatever were their faults, and, we
venture to add, whatever were their illusions--these persons thus treated
were the Representatives of the leading civilized nation, were sovereign
Legislators, senators of the people, inviolable Deputies, and sacred by
the great law of Democracy, and that in the same manner as each man bears
in himself something of the mind of God, so each of these nominees of
universal suffrage bore something of the soul of France; if it were
possible to forget this for a moment, it assuredly would be a spectacle
perhaps more laughable than sad, and certainly more philosophical than
lamentable to see, on this December morning, after so many laws of
repression, after so many exceptional measures, after so many votes of
censure and of the state of siege, after so many refusals of amnesty,
after so many affronts to equity, to justice, to the human conscience, to
the public good faith, to right, after so many favors to the police,
after so many smiles bestowed on absolution, the entire Party of Order
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