M. do Fourtou warms to his role of repression, and
if his 'countrymen were not the most submissive of people, the week would scarcely have ended in calmness. The police have stopped the sale of M. Thiers's portrait in the streets—possibly by reason of the ominous warmth of his reception at Isle Adam last Sunday— just at the time that the papers announce that 80,000 copies of a portrait of the Marshal on horseback have been struck off for provincial circulation. Every day people are convicted of the new, elastic crime, "insulting the Marshal ;" and the manager of the democratic Mot d'Orclre—which has been as unfortunate as the Levant Herald in old days has been condemned to two months' imprisonment and a fine of £200, for asserting that the Marshal is descended from an ,apothecary, and not from the Kings of Ireland. The last official freak has been to prosecute and fine two newspapers for publish- ing coloured political maps of the Departments showing where the 363 sit. A few of the Courts have been bold enough to reverse the absurdest decisions, but the pliancy of the Judges and the forbearance of the Opposition encourage the Home Minister, and there is no reason why, in his half-humorous recklessness, he should not say that M. Thiers must not be allowed to go about making speeches. M. de Broglie would find high moral reasons for showing that his words as well as his portraits must be seditious.
Previous page
