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face divine" was ridiculed at the Elysée, and it was there that for
twenty years every baseness was brought into fashion--effrontery
included.
History, whatever may be its pride, is condemned to know that the Elysée
existed. The grotesque side does not prevent the tragic side. There is at
the Elysée a room which has seen the second abdication, the abdication
after Waterloo. It is at the Elysée that Napoleon the First ended and
that Napoleon the Third began. It is at the Elysée that Dupin appeared to
the two Napoleons; in 1815 to depose the Great, in 1851 to worship the
Little. At this last epoch this place was perfectly villainous. There no
longer remained one virtue there. At the Court of Tiberius there was
still Thraseas, but round Louis Bonaparte there was nobody. If one sought
Conscience, one found Baroche; if one sought Religion, one found
Montalembert.
[
14] Better known afterwards as Persigny.
372
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