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page 14
Ask the old Duke of Orleans if he recalls a voice that pursued him when he took the Oath within the Chamber on the 9th of August, throwing in his face the shouts of Liberty! and the Republic! amidst the acclamations of his rented crowd? Yes, I am a Republican, but it is not July’s fine sun that has made of such ideals a sudden blossom! I have been so since childhood. Ah, not a Republican dancing with red or blue stockings, some barn-orator or planter of Poplars! I am a Republican in the way of the lynx: I am a Republican in the way of the wolf! If I speak of a Republic it is because the word, to me, represents the greatest liberty that can be achieved by Society and Civilisation. I am a Republican because I could not be a Caribbeanist; I require a quite enormous amount of Freedom: shall the Republic give me this? I have yet to be so blessed. But when this hope is disappointed, I shall still, like many others, have my Missouri. When I am there, ravaged as I am, embittered by so much misfortune, I may dream of Equality, I may come here to the Consitution of the Countryside, which surpasses the approbation of mere men. To those who shall say that this volume is the work of a lunatic, of some Romantic Mountain-Goat who thrusts ‘Souls’ and ‘Dear God’ into fashion, who, according to the Figaro, dines on babies and makes moonshine in skulls – you I can avoid. I have your description: frowning brow; forcep-strangled expression; ropey hair; strap of bristly crackling upon each side of the face; extensive shirt-collar like a doubletriangulated sheet; stovepipe hat; umbrella. To those who shall say that this volume is the work of a Saint-Simoniac!… to those who say it is the work of a Republican, a King-Eater: he must be done to Death!… Well, 12
page 15
they will be the little shopkeepers who have no customers: the disappointed grocer is a tiger!… the State Officials who might lose all upon the change of the wind: the State Official is a Phillppist, a pompom-maker! These are good people all, these guillotine-and-papermoney-Republicans, these Head-Dispensers – who do not understand the high enterprise of Saint-Just, but reproach him for his necessary severities, and yet heap praise upon the carnages of Buonaparte! and Buonaparte’s eight million dead! To those who shall say that this book is surbuban and distasteful, my answer is that mockery never made the Best Bed: is this work not all fitting for an age, which has for its government ignorant Accountants and Gun-Traders, and has for its King a man whose battle-cry is ‘Praise God and my Shops!’? Happily, to console us for such things, we have still Adultery! Maryland tobacco! and those little rolling-papers from Spain to make our cigarillos with. 13

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Ask the old Duke of Orleans if he recalls a voice that pursued him when he took the Oath within the Chamber on the 9th of August, throwing in his face the shouts of Liberty! and the Republic! amidst the acclamations of his rented crowd?

Yes, I am a Republican, but it is not July’s fine sun that has made of such ideals a sudden blossom! I have been so since childhood. Ah, not a Republican dancing with red or blue stockings, some barn-orator or planter of Poplars! I am a Republican in the way of the lynx: I am a Republican in the way of the wolf!

If I speak of a Republic it is because the word, to me, represents the greatest liberty that can be achieved by Society and Civilisation. I am a Republican because I could not be a Caribbeanist; I require a quite enormous amount of Freedom: shall the Republic give me this? I have yet to be so blessed.

But when this hope is disappointed, I shall still, like many others, have my Missouri. When I am there, ravaged as I am, embittered by so much misfortune, I may dream of Equality, I may come here to the Consitution of the Countryside, which surpasses the approbation of mere men.

To those who shall say that this volume is the work of a lunatic, of some Romantic Mountain-Goat who thrusts ‘Souls’ and ‘Dear God’ into fashion, who, according to the Figaro, dines on babies and makes moonshine in skulls – you I can avoid. I have your description:

frowning brow; forcep-strangled expression; ropey hair; strap of bristly crackling upon each side of the face; extensive shirt-collar like a doubletriangulated sheet; stovepipe hat; umbrella. To those who shall say that this volume is the work of a Saint-Simoniac!… to those who say it is the work of a Republican, a King-Eater: he must be done to Death!… Well,

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