Page:A Scene from Contemporary History.djvu/7

516 tribune shall be no longer free, I shall descend, never to mount it again (From the right,—A dreadful calamity, truly!) The tribune without liberty is acceptable only to the orator without self-respect (Profound sensation)

Well, I shall see if the tribune is respected I continue No! After Napoleon the Great, I would not have Napoleon the Little!

Come, let us respect great things A truce to parodies! To be able to put an eagle upon the flags, one must have an eagle at the Tuileries! Where is the eagle? (Long applause)

M Leon Faucher The orator insults the President of the Republic (Yes! Yes! From the right)

M the President—You insult the President of the Republic (Yes! Yes! From the right M Abatticci gesticulates vehemently)

M Victor Hugo—I continue—

Gentlemen, like all the world, like you all, I have held in my hands these newspapers, these tracts, these pamphlets, imperialist or Cæsarist, as it is called to-day  An idea strikes me, and it is impossible for me not to communicate it to the Assembly (Immense agitation, the orator continues—)

Yes, it is impossible for me not to let it break forth before this assembly What would say this soldier, this great soldier, who is laid there at the Invalids, and in whose shadow men fake shelter, and whose name they invoke so often and so strangely, what whould this Napoleon say, who, amidst so many prodigious battles, went eight hundred leagues from Pans to provoke the old Muscovite barbarism in the great duel of 1812, what would this sublime spirit say, who saw with horror the possibility of a Cossack Europe, and who, certes, whatever were his instincts for authority, would prefer Republican Europe to it, what would he say, he! if from the depths of his tomb he could see, that his empire, his glorious and warlike empire, has to-day for paynegyrists, for apologists, for theorists and for reconstncters, whom? men, who, in our radiant and free epoch, turn towards the North