person, that is to say, somebody who can put himself above other
people. The constitutional thimble-rig is carried on to-day, dear boy,
more seriously than ever. The infamous monarchy, displaced by the
heroism of the people, was a sort of drab, you could laugh and revel
with her; but La Patrie is a shrewish and virtuous wife, and
willy-nilly you must take her prescribed endearments. Then besides, as
you know, authority passed over from the Tuileries to the journalists,
at the time when the Budget changed its quarters and went from the
Faubourg Saint-Germain to the Chaussee de Antin. But this you may not
know perhaps. The Government, that is, the aristocracy of lawyers and
bankers who represent the country to-day, just as the priests used to
do in the time of the monarchy, has felt the necessity of mystifying
the worthy people of France with a few new words and old ideas, like
philosophers of every school, and all strong intellects ever since
time began. So now Royalist-national ideas must be inculcated, by
proving to us that it is far better to pay twelve million francs,
thirty-three centimes to La Patrie, represented by Messieurs
Such-and-Such, than to pay eleven hundred million francs, nine centimes
to a king who used to say _I_ instead of _we_. In a word, a journal,
with two or three hundred thousand francs, good, at the back of it, has
just been started, with a view to making an opposition paper to content
the discontented, without prejudice to the national government of the
citizen-king. We scoff at liberty as at despotism now, and at religion
or incredulity quite impartially. And since, for us, 'our country'
means a capital where ideas circulate and are sold at so much a line,
a succulent dinner every day, and the play at frequent intervals,
where profligate women swarm, where suppers last on into the next day,
and light loves are hired by the hour like cabs; and since Paris will
always be the most adorable of all countries, the country of joy,
liberty, wit, pretty women, _mauvais sujets_, and good wine; where the