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Many of the personages comprised in this menagerie possessed no other
renown but the outcry caused by their debts, clamoring around them.
Such a one had been twice declared bankrupt, but this extenuating
circumstance was added, "not under his own name:" Another who belonged
to a literary or scientific circle was reputed to have sold his vote. A
third, who was handsome, elegant, fashionable, dandified, polished,
gilded, embroidered, owed his prosperity to a connection which indicated
a filthiness of soul.
Such people as these gave their adherence with little hesitation to the
deed which "saved society."
Some others, amongst those who composed this mosaic, possessed no
political enthusiasm, and merely consented to figure in this list in
order to keep their situations and their salaries; they were under the
Empire what they had been before the Empire, neuters, and during the
nineteen years of the reign, they continued to exercise their military,
judicial, or administrative functions unobtrusively, surrounded with the
right and proper respect due to inoffensive idiots.
Others were genuine politicians, belonging to that learned school which
begins with Guizot, and does not finish with Parieu, grave physicians of
social order, who reassure the frightened middle-classes, and who
preserve dead things.
"
"
Shall I lose my eye?" asked Messer Pancrace.
Not at all, my friend, I hold it in my hand."
544
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