Michel de Bourges answered him.  Michel de Bourges with his sound logic and quick reasoning put his finger on what was for us the immediate question; the crime of Louis Bonaparte, the necessity to rise up erect before this crime.  It was rather a conversation than a debate, but Michel de Bourges and Jules Favre, who spoke next, raised it to the highest eloquence.  Jules Favre, worthy to understand the powerful mind of Girardin would willingly have adopted this idea, if it had seemed practicable, of the universal strike, of the void around the man; he found it great, but impossible.  A nation does not pull up short.  Even when struck to the heart, it still moves on.  Social movement, which is the animal life of society, survives all political movement.  Whatever Emile de Girardin might hope, there would always be a butcher who would kill, a baker who would bake, men must eat!  “To make universal labor fold its arms is a chimera!” said Jules Favre, “a dream!  The People fight for three days, for four days, for a week; society will not wait indefinitely.”  As to the situation, it was doubtless terrible, it was doubtless tragical, and blood flowed, but who had brought about this situation?  Louis Bonaparte.  For ourselves we would accept it, such as it was, and nothing more.

Emile de Girardin, steadfast, logical, absolute in his idea, persisted.  Some might be shaken.  Arguments, which were so abundant in this vigorous and inexhaustible mind, crowded upon him.  As for me, I saw Duty before me like a torch.

I interrupted him.  I cried out, “It is too late to deliberate what we are to do.  We have not got to do it.  It is done.  The gauntlet of the coup d’etat is thrown down, the Left takes it up.  The matter is as simple as this.  The outrage of the Second December is an infamous, insolent, unprecedented defiance to Democracy, to Civilization, to Liberty, to the People, to France.  I repeat that we have taken up this gauntlet, we are the Law, but the living Law which at need can arm itself and fight.  A gun in our hands is a protest.  I do not know whether we shall conquer, but it is our duty to protest.  To protest first in Parliament; when Parliament is closed, to protest in the street; when the street is closed, to protest in exile; when exile is fulfilled, to protest in the tomb.  Such is our part, our office, our mission.  The authority of the Representatives is elastic; the People bestow it, events extend it.”

While we were deliberating, our colleague, Napoleon Bonaparte, son of the ex-King of Westphalia, came in.  He listened.  He spoke.  He energetically blamed, in a tone of sincere and generous indignation, his cousin’s crime, but he declared that in his opinion a written protest would suffice.  A protest of the Representatives, a protest of the Council of State, a protest of the Magistracy, a protest of the Press, that this protest would be unanimous and would enlighten France, but that no other form