It
is, indeed, surprising, that so sagacious and parental a government as
that of Napoleon the Third,--may His Majesty be long preserved for the
civilization of France, the peace of Europe, and the glory of mankind in
general!--it is surprising, that his all-providing and all-foreseeing
government has not long ago discovered how the craving of the national
stomach for food, and of the popular mind for political purification,
might be stilled by no longer transporting political offenders and
_suspects_ to French Guiana or Lambessa, where they uselessly and
ignobly perish, but by sentencing them, instead, to the enviable lot of
making a feast for their brethren. Would not every Socialist, receiving
permission thus to help feed society, exclaim: _C'est magnifique! mais
c'est sublime!_
When Robespierre was in the zenith of his guillotinacious glory, the
_bonnes_ would sit around the scaffold, minding children and knitting
stockings, to see the head of a marquis or of a shoemaker fall. We leave
it to every reader, whether there would not be more historic unity and
poetic completeness in the _tableau_, were we to read that these good
creatures dined upon the _ci-devant_, after the execution.
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