In a Bonapartist demonstration at Bassac, near Cognac, on Sunday,
M. Paul de Cassagnac made a remarkable admission. He said :—" The Republic of to-day has nothing very terrible about it. It deludes honest men and sufficiently restrains the mob. If it lasted, our hopes would be deferred." But then he was sure it would not last. The Marshal would fall "like a tall, dead tree, clad with ivy ;" the Senate would become Republican ; the Con- vention would be renewed ; the Assembly would be transferred from Versailles to Paris; the violent Republic would reappear, and then, —the Empire would return. "Behind the fire there comes a fireman ; behind the rogue marches the policeman ; behind Robespierre there is a Bonaparte ; behind the criminals of June, 1848, there is a Bonaparte. Why not, then, behind Gambetta ?" In other words, M. Paul de Cassagnac wishes for "the criminal," in order that the policeman may appear behind him. He thinks the end justifies the means, that the hope of the policeman justifies the wish for the criminal, and the desire for the Empire 'his own eagerness for the anarchy which might bring the Empire. Fortunately, he will be disappointed. The French peasantry are as weary of anarchy as of empires. What they love is "the Republic wbicla has nothing very terrible about it,"—the republic of quiet and thrifty peasante,—the republic of a glorified Switzerland.
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