Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 07.djvu/104

84 now had they survived, that there are really few complete examples of many years to be found.

But among both old and young, in the hall of the Amis du Peuple there was a dignified seriousness, such as we always find among men who are conscious of their own strength. Their eyes, however, flashed, and they often cried "C'est vrai! c'est vrai!"—"it is true!" when the orator adduced a fact. When the citizen Cavaignac, in a discourse which I could not well understand, on account of his short, careless, and rapidly-ejaculated sentences, mentioned the judicial prosecutions to which writers are always exposed, I noticed that my neighbour clung to me from inner emotion. He was a young enragé, a fire-eater with his eyes like raging stars, wearing the low, broad-brimmed hat of black glazed cloth which distinguishes the Republican. "But is it not true," he at last remarked to me, "that this persecution of writers is an indirect censorship? One should dare to print whatever one may say, and man has the right to say anything. Marat declared that it was a great wrong to cite a citizen before a tribunal merely for his opinions, and that a man is only responsible to the public for whatever opinions he may hold. ("Toute citation