“The street-lamps!” said Nathan; “but we are too modest to fear for ourselves, we only run the risk of cracks.” “As a nation, you have too much mental activity to allow any government to run its course without interference. But for that, you would make the conquest of Europe a second time, and win with the pen all that you failed to keep with the sword.” “Journalism is an evil,” said Claude Vignon. “The evil may have its uses, but the present Government is resolved to put it down. There will be a battle over it. Who will give way? That is the question.” “The Government will give way,” said Blondet. “I keep telling people that with all my might! Intellectual power is _the_ great power in France; and the press has more wit than all men of intellect put together, and the hypocrisy of Tartufe besides.” “Blondet! Blondet! you are going too far!” called Finot. “Subscribers are present.” “You are the proprietor of one of those poison shops; you have reason to be afraid; but I can laugh at the whole business, even if I live by it.” “Blondet is right,” said Claude Vignon. “Journalism, so far from being in the hands of a priesthood, came to be first a party weapon, and then a commercial speculation, carried on without conscience or scruple, like other commercial speculations. Every newspaper, as Blondet says, is a shop to which people come for opinions of the right shade. If there were a paper for hunchbacks, it would set forth plainly, morning and evening, in its columns, the beauty, the utility, and necessity of deformity. A newspaper is not supposed to enlighten its readers, but to supply them with congenial opinions. Give any newspaper time enough, and it will be base, hypocritical, shameless, and treacherous; the periodical press will be the death of ideas, systems, and individuals; nay, it will flourish upon their decay. It will take the credit of all creations of the brain; the harm that it does is done anonymously. We, for instance—I, Claude Vignon; you, Blondet; you, Lousteau; and you, Finot—we are all Platos, Aristides, and Catos, Plutarch’s men, in short; we are all immaculate; we may wash our hands of all iniquity. Napoleon’s sublime aphorism, suggested by his study of the Convention, ‘No one individual is responsible for a crime committed collectively,’ sums up the whole significance of a phenomenon, moral or immoral, whichever you please. However shamefully a newspaper may behave, the disgrace attaches to no one person.” “The authorities will resort to repressive legislation,” interposed du Bruel. “A law is going to be passed, in fact.” “Pooh!” retorted Nathan. “What is the law in France against the spirit in which it is received, the most subtle of all solvents?”