“That is why I have come to you to-night.  I wish to succor this great wounded glory.  By the advice which I am giving you, if you can carry it out, if the Left carries it out, I save the first Napoleon; for if a second crime is superposed upon his glory, this glory would disappear.  Yes, this name would founder, and history would no longer own it.  I will go farther and complete my idea.  I also save the present Napoleon, for he who as yet has no glory will only have come.  I save his memory from an eternal pillory.  Therefore, arrest him.”

He was truly and deeply moved.  He resumed,—­

“As to the Republic, the arrest of Louis Bonaparte is deliverance for her.  I am right, therefore, in saying that by what I am proposing to you I am saving my family and my country.”

“But,” I said to him, “what you propose to me is a coup d’etat.”

“Do you think so?”

“Without doubt.  We are the minority, and we should commit an act which belongs to the majority.  We are a part of the Assembly.  We should be acting as though we were the entire Assembly.  We who condemn all usurpation should ourselves become usurpers.  We should put our hands upon a functionary whom the Assembly alone has the right of arresting.  We, the defenders of the Constitution, we should break the Constitution.  We, the men of the Law, we should violate the Law.  It is a coup d’etat.”

“Yes, but a coup d’etat for a good purpose.”

“Evil committed for a good purpose remains evil.”

“Even when it succeeds?”

“Above all when it succeeds.”

“Why?”

“Because it then becomes an example.”

“You do not then approve of the Eighteenth Fructidor?”

“No.”

“But Eighteenth Fructidors prevent Eighteenth Brumaires.”

“No.  They prepare the way for them.”

“But reasons of State exist?”

“No.  What exists is the Law.”

“The Eighteenth Fructidor has been accepted by exceedingly honest minds.”

“I know that.”

“Blanqui is in its favor, with Michelet.”

“I am against it, with Barbes.”

From the moral aspect I passed to the practical aspect.

“This said,” resumed I, “let us examine your plan.”

This plan bristled with difficulties.  I pointed them out to him.

“Count on the National Guard!  Why, General Lawoestyne had not yet got command of it.  Count on the Army?  Why, General Neumayer was at Lyons, and not at Paris.  Would he march to the assistance of the Assembly?  What did we know about this?  As for Lawoestyne, was he not double-faced?  Were they sure of him?  Call to arms the 8th Legion?  Forestier was no longer Colonel.  The 5th and 6th?  But Gressier and Howyne were only lieutenant-colonels, would these legions follow them?  Order the Commissary Yon?  But would he obey the Left alone?  He was the agent of the Assembly, and consequently of