Page:A Scene from Contemporary History.djvu/2

Rh M Lepic—You had better ask your father

M Victor Hugo—What are the elements of it? What is it that I have before me? What is it that we have before our eyes? All our liberties takwn as it were in a trap, one after the other, and garotted, universal suffrage, betrayed, given up, mutilated, socialist programmes ending in a jesuitical policy, for Government, an immense intrigue (Movement,) which history will perhaps call a plot (Great sensation), I do not know what extraordinary secret understanding it is that gives to the Republic, the Empire for its end, and which makes of five hundred thousand functionaries a sort of Bonapartist free-masonry in the midst of the nation! All reform adjourned or abused, disproportionate and onerous taxes on the people maintained or re-established, a state of siege fettering five departments, Paris and Lyons put under surveillance, amnesty refused, transportation aggravated, deportation voted, groans at the kasbah of Bone, tortures at Belle-Isle, casemates where matting would not be left to rot, but where men are left to rot!———(Sensation) The press tracked, the jury picked,—not enough of justice and a great deal too much of police, misery below, anarchy above, arbitrariness, pressure, iniquity! Outside,—the skeleton of the Roman Republic (Applause on the left)

Voice on the right—It is the indictment of the Republic

M the President—Let him go on Do not interrupt him  This confirms that the tribune is free Continue (Very good! Very good! from the left)

M Charras—In spite of you

M Victor Hugo—The gallows, that is to say, Austria (Movement) standing over Hungary, over Milan, over Vwnice, Sicily given up to fusillade, the hope of nationalities in France destroyed, the inner tie of peoples rent asunder, every where right trod under foot, in the north, as in the south, at Cassel as at Palermo, a hidden coalition of kings which waits only for the occasion, our diplomacy mute,—I do not wish to say accomplice, somebody who is always cowardly before somebody who is always