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pictured on the glazed partition of the parlor, "Take care, sir; do not
talk so loudly."
"
What!" I exclaimed, "you have come to this--you dare not speak, you dare
not utter the name of 'Bonaparte' aloud; you barely mumble a few words in
a whisper here, in this street, in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where, from
all the doors, from all the windows, from all the pavements, from all the
very stones, ought to be heard the cry, 'To arms.'"
Auguste demonstrated to me what I already saw too clearly, and what
Girard had shadowed forth in the morning--the moral situation of the
Faubourg--that the people were "dazed"--that it seemed to all of them
that universal suffrage was restored; that the downfall of the law of the
31st of May was a good thing.
Here I interrupted him.
"But this law of the 31st of May, it was Louis Bonaparte who instigated
it, it was Rouher who made it, it was Baroche who proposed it, and the
Bonapartists who voted it. You are dazzled by a thief who has taken your
purse, and who restores it to you!"
"Not I," said Auguste, "but the others."
And he continued, "To tell the whole truth, people did not care much for
the Constitution, they liked the Republic, but the Republic was
maintained too much by force for their taste. In all this they could only
see one thing clearly, the cannons ready to slaughter them--they
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