LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY,
AND CENSURE.
THE PUBLICATION OF THE PORTRAIT OF
Vélocipède IV.
HAS BEEN FORBIDDEN BY THE CENSURE.
IT CAN BE FOUND AT ALL THE PHOTOGRAPHERS.
I translate the burlesque biography that follows the above. It may serve also as a specimen of the new literary commodity of which the Parisians seem so fond, and for which a name has been invented—blague—which means amusingly malign gossip.
"Vélocipède IV. (Napoleon-Eugene-Louis-Jean-Joseph, Prince Imperial, more commonly known by the name of:) born at Paris, March 16th, 1856. He is the son of Napoleon III. and of the Empress, Eugénie de Montijo.
"Here a parenthesis. The Trombinoscope has often been accused of brutality. When we traced the profile of the ex-empress, the cry was that we had no consideration even for women. We replied that, in our eyes, sovereigns were no more women than were the she petroleum-throwers. To-day there will not be wanting people to say that we do not spare children; and we shall reply, as we have often said before, that sons are not responsible for the crimes of their fathers until the day when they set up a claim to profit by them. If, during the two years that the Trombinoscope has plied his vocation, we have not aimed a shot at the young hero of Sarrebruck, it is precisely because childhood inspires respect in us. If this youth, when consulted upon his calling, had replied, 'My desire is to be an architect or a shoe-maker,' we should have had nothing to say. But mark: scarcely has he ceased to be a child when, on being questioned as to his choice of a trade, he answers, 'I wish to be emperor.' Oh, indeed! The son of Napoleon III. has entered upon his career; he is a child no more; and the Trombinoscope re-enters into all his rights.
"We said, then, that Eugene-Napoleon was born March 16th, 1856. The doctor who received him perceived that he had upon la fesse droite a mass of odd little red marks. Upon examining closely this phenomenon, he perceived that these marks were a representation of the bombardment of the house Sallanvrouze in December, 1851, upon the Boulevard Montmartre. All was there: the intrepid artillery of Canrobert, smashing the shop-windows and pulverizing a newspaper stand; the nurses disemboweled upon the seats; the bootblack on the corner having his customer's leg carried away from between his hands, etc., etc.
"The empress during her pregnancy had read Victor Hugo's 'Napoleon the Little,' and had been much struck with the chapter in which the coup d'état is so well related. They concealed from the people this tattooing—this far too significant trade-mark—and they placed the new-born child in a cradle with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor around his neck. The high dignitaries then advanced to prostrate themselves before the august infant, who sucked his thumb, and they relate, in this connection, in the blatant clap-trap History of Napoleon III., that one of the courtiers narrowly escaped falling into disgrace by appearing stupefied to see the Prince Imperial decorated at the age of fifteen hours. Happily he recovered himself in time, and replied to the emperor, who had remarked his surprise: