If, perchance, you were innocent as the tiger!
At certain moments one is tempted to believe that, having no warning voice within, any more than the tiger, you have no more sense of responsibility.
Really, at times I pity you. Who knows? perhaps after all, you are only a miserable blind force!
Louis Bonaparte, you have not the notion of good and evil. You are, perhaps, the only man of all mankind who has not that notion. This gives you a start over the human race. Yes, you are formidable. It is that which constitutes your genius, it is said; I admit that, at all events, it is that which at this moment constitutes your power.
But do you know what results from this sort of power? Possession, yes; right, no.
Crime essays to deceive history as to its true name; it says, "I am success."—Thou art crime!
You are crowned and masked. Down with the mask! Down with the crown!
Ah! you are wasting your trouble, you are wasting your appeals to the people, your plebiscites, your ballots, your footings, your executive committees proclaiming the sum total, your red or green banners, with these figures in gold paper,—7,500,000! You will derive no advantage from this elaborate mise-en-scène. There are things about which universal sentiment is not to be gulled. The human race, taken as a whole, is an honest man.
Even by those about you you are judged. There is not one of your domestics, whether in gold lace or in embroidered coat, valet of the stable, or valet of the Senate, who does not say beneath his breath that which I say aloud. What I proclaim, they whisper; that is the only difference. You are omnipotent, they bend the knee, that is all. They salute you, their brows burning with shame.
They feel that they are base, but they know that you are infamous.