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thief, who would say of a parricide, What roguery! Incapable of gaining
a footing on any height, even of infamy, always remaining half-way
uphill, a little above petty rascals, a little below great malefactors.
They believed him clever at effecting all that is done in gambling-hells
and in robbers' caves, but with this transposition, that he would cheat
in the caves, and that he would assassinate in the gambling-hells.
The massacre of the Boulevards suddenly unveiled this spirit. They saw it
such as it really was: the ridiculous nicknames "Big-beak," "Badinguet,"
vanished; they saw the bandit, they saw the true contraffatto hidden
under the false Bonaparte.
There was a shudder! It was this then which this man held in reserve!
Apologies have been attempted, they could but fail. It is easy to praise
Bonaparte, for people have praised Dupin; but it is an exceedingly
complicated operation to cleanse him. What is to be done with the 4th
of December? How will that difficulty be surmounted? It is far more
troublesome to justify than to glorify; the sponge works with greater
difficulty than the censer; the panegyrists of the coup d'état have
lost their labor. Madame Sand herself, although a woman of lofty
intellect, has failed miserably in her attempt to rehabilitate
Bonaparte, for the simple reason that whatever one may do, the
death-roll reappears through this whitewashing.
No! no! no extenuation whatever is possible. Unfortunate Bonaparte. The
blood is drawn. It must be drunk.
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