Body became the most famous orators of the Chamber after the
Restoration. No Chamber has ever been the equal of the _Corps
Legislatif_, comparing them man for man. The elective system of the
Empire was, then, indisputably the best.

Some persons may, perhaps, think that this declaration is somewhat
autocratic and self-assertive. They will quarrel with the novelist for
wanting to be an historian, and will call him to account for writing
politics. I am simply fulfilling an obligation--that is my reply. The
work I have undertaken will be as long as a history; I was compelled
to explain the logic of it, hitherto unrevealed, and its principles
and moral purpose.

Having been obliged to withdraw the prefaces formerly published, in
response to essentially ephemeral criticisms, I will retain only one
remark.

Writers who have a purpose in view, were it only a reversion to
principles familiar in the past because they are eternal, should
always clear the ground. Now every one who, in the domain of ideas,
brings his stone by pointing out an abuse, or setting a mark on some
evil that it may be removed--every such man is stigmatized as immoral.
The accusation of immorality, which has never failed to be cast at the
courageous writer, is, after all, the last that can be brought when
nothing else remains to be said to a romancer. If you are truthful in
your pictures; if by dint of daily and nightly toil you succeed in
writing the most difficult language in the world, the word _immoral_
is flung in your teeth. Socrates was immoral; Jesus Christ was
immoral; they both were persecuted in the name of the society they
overset or reformed. When a man is to be killed he is taxed with