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In this world everything is a clock. To gravitate is to oscillate. One
pole is attracted to the other. Francis I. is attracted by Triboulet;
Louis XIV. is attracted by Lebel. There exists a deep affinity between
extreme elevation and extreme debasement.
It is abasement which directs. Nothing is easier of comprehension. It is
he who is below who pulls the strings. No position more convenient. He
is the eye, and has the ear. He is the eye of the government; he has the
ear of the king. To have the eye of the king is to draw and shut, at
one's whim, the bolt of the royal conscience, and to throw into that
conscience whatever one wishes. The mind of the king is his cupboard; if
he be a rag-picker, it is his basket. The ears of kings belong not to
kings, and therefore it is that, on the whole, the poor devils are not
altogether responsible for their actions. He who does not possess his
own thought does not possess his own deed. A king obeys--what? Any evil
spirit buzzing from outside in his ear; a noisome fly of the abyss.
This buzzing commands. A reign is a dictation.
The loud voice is the sovereign; the low voice, sovereignty. Those who
know how to distinguish, in a reign, this low voice, and to hear what it
whispers to the loud, are the real historians.
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