In the crisis through which we are passing, though it is a salutary crisis which will lead only to good, everyone exclaims at the dreadful moral disorder and the imminent social danger.  Who, then, is guilty of these ravages?  Whom shall we punish?  Throughout Europe, the party of fear answers “France.”  Throughout France, it answers “Paris.”  In Paris, it blames the Press.  But every thoughtful man must see that it is none of these, but is the human spirit.

It is the human spirit that has made the nations what they are.  From the beginning, through infinite debate and contradiction, it has sought, unresting, to solve the problem eternally placed before the creature by his Creator.  It is the human spirit which takes from age to age the form of the great revolts of history; it has been in turn, and sometimes altogether, error, illusion, heresy, schism, protest, and the truth.  The human spirit is ever the great shepherd of the generations, proceeding always towards the just, the beautiful, and the true, enlightening the multitude, ennobling souls, directing the mind of man towards God.

Let the party of fear throughout Europe consider the magnitude of the task which they have undertaken.  When they have destroyed the Press, they have yet to destroy Paris.  When Paris is fallen, there remains France.  Let France be annihilated, there still remains the human spirit—­a thing intangible as the light, inaccessible as the sun.

V.—­In Exile

Nothing is more terrible than exile.  I do not say for him who suffers, but for the tyrant who inflicts it.  A solitary figure paces a distant shore, or rises in the morning to his philosophic labours, or calls on God among the rocks and trees; his hairs become grey, and then white, in the slow passing of the years and in his longing for home; his lot is a sorrowful one; but his innocence is terrible to the crowned miscreant who sent him there.  From 1852 to 1870 I was in exile.

How pleasant are those islands of the Channel, and how like France!  Jersey, perhaps, more charming than Guernsey, prettier if less imposing; in Jersey the forest has become a garden; the island is like a bouquet of flowers, of the size of London, a smiling land, an idyll set in the midst of the sea.

The exile soon learns that, though the tyrant has placed him afar, he does not release his hold.  Many and ingenious are the snares laid for the banished.  A prince calls on you, but though he is of royal blood, he is also a detective of police.  A grave professor stays at your house, and you surprise him searching your papers.  Everything is permitted against you; you are outside the law, outside of common justice, outside of respect.  They will say that they have your authority to publish your conversations, and will attribute to you words that you have never spoken and actions that you have never done.  Never write to your friends—­your letters are opened on the way.  Beware of all who are kindly to you in exile; they are ruining you in Paris.  You are isolated as a leper.  A mysterious stranger whispers in your ear that he can procure the assassination of Bonaparte; it is Bonaparte offering to kill himself.  Every day of your life is a new outrage.  Only one thing is open to the exile; it is to turn his thought to other subjects.