If their impotence in parliament could no longer be doubted,
they were now justified to limit their activity to outbursts of moral
indignation. If the party of Order pretended to see in them, as the last
official representatives of the revolution, all the horrors of anarchy
incarnated, they were free to appear all the more flat and modest
in reality. Over June 13 they consoled themselves with the profound
expression: "If they but dare to assail universal suffrage . . . then
. . . then we will show who we are!" Nous verrons. [#5 We shall see.]
As to the "Mountaineers," who had fled abroad, it suffices here to
say that Ledru-Rollin--he having accomplished the feat of hopelessly
ruining, in barely a fortnight, the powerful party at whose head he
stood--, found himself called upon to build up a French government "in
partibus;" that his figure, at a distance, removed from the field of
action, seemed to gain in size in the measure that the level of the
revolution sank and the official prominences of official France became
more and more dwarfish; that he could figure as republican Pretender
for 1852, and periodically issued to the Wallachians and other peoples
circulars in which "despot of the continent" is threatened with the
feats that he and his allies had in contemplation.
Pages:
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86