unintelligible metaphor and melodramatic braggadocio, your answer might
have been his; but pardon me if I add, it would not be that of Common
Sense."

"Monsieur le Vicomte might rebuke me more politely," said Rameau,
colouring high.

"Accept my apologies; I did not mean to rebuke, but to instruct. The
times are not those of 1789. And Nature, ever repeating herself in the
production of coxcombs and blockheads, never repeats herself in the
production of Mirabeaus. The Empire is doomed--doomed, because it is
hostile to the free play of intellect. Any Government that gives
absolute preponderance to the many is hostile to intellect, for intellect
is necessarily confined to the few.

"Intellect is the most revengeful of all the elements of society. It
cares not what the materials through which it insinuates or forces its
way to its seat.

"I accept the aid of Pom-de-Tair. I do not demean myself to the extent
of writing articles that may favor the principles of Pom-de-Tair, signed
in the name of Victor de Mauleon or of Pierre Firinin.

"I will beg you, my dear editor, to obtain clever, smart writers, who
know nothing about Socialists and Internationalists, who therefore will
not commit _Le Sens Commun_ by advocating the doctrines of those idiots,
but who will flatter the vanity of the _canaille_--vaguely; write any
stuff they please about the renown of Paris, 'the eye of the world,'
'the sun of the European system,' &c., of the artisans of Paris as
supplying soul to that eye and fuel to that sun--any _blague_ of that