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208 But what will become of France? Well, France is a persevering Penelope, who daily weaves and duly waits in hope of gaining time till the arrival of the right man or the husband. And who is he? That I know not. Only this I know, that he will bend the great bow and break up the banquet of the insolent suitors; he will treat them to deadly bolt-heads; he will hang the doctrinaire servant-girls who have prostituted themselves to all; he will purify the house of all its horrible disorder, and, with the help of the wise goddess, will establish better management. And as our actual situation, in which weakness is altogether like that of the time of the Directory, so shall we experience another Eighteenth of Brumaire, and the right man will suddenly appear among the powerful men, grown pale, and announce the end of their reign. Then there will, of course, be outcries that the Constitution has been violated, as of old in the Council of the Elders when there also came the right man to clear the house. But as he in anger cried aloud:—"Constitution! You dare to appeal to the Constitution! you who violated it on the Eighteenth of Fructidor, on the Twenty-second of Floreal, on Thirtieth of Prairial!"—even so will the right man cite the day and date when the juste-milieu Ministry also violated the Constitution.

How little the Constitution has entered not only