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He answered me,--
"Our presses are under seal, and guarded by the Gendarmerie Mobile,
but I have five or six willing workmen, they can produce a few placards
with the brush."
"
Well then," said I, "print our decrees and our Proclamation." "I will
print anything," answered he, "as long as it is not an appeal to arms."
He added, addressing himself to me, "I know your Proclamation. It is a
war-cry, I cannot print that."
They remonstrated at this. He then declared that he for his part made
Proclamations, but in a different sense from ours. That according to him
Louis Bonaparte should not be combated by force of arms, but by creating
a vacuum. By an armed conflict he would be the conqueror, by a vacuum he
would be conquered. He urged us to aid him in isolating the "deposed of
the Second December." "Let us bring about a vacuum around him!" cried
Emile de Girardin, "let us proclaim an universal strike. Let the merchant
cease to sell, let the consumer cease from buying, let the workman cease
from working, let the butcher cease from killing, let the baker cease
from baking, let everything keep holiday, even to the National Printing
Office, so that Louis Bonaparte may not find a compositor to compose the
Moniteur, not a pressman to machine it, not a bill-sticker to placard
it! Isolation, solitude, a void space round this man! Let the nation
withdraw from him. Every power from which the nation withdraws falls like
a tree from which the roots are divided. Louis Bonaparte abandoned by all
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