There is in all change something at once agreeable and infamous, something that smacks of infidelity and of moving day. That is enough to explain the French Revolution. VII My intoxication in 1848. Of what sort was that intoxication? Desire of vengeance. Natural pleasure in demolishing. Literary drunkenness; memories of reading. The 15th of May. Ever the desire of destruction. Legitimate desire, if all that is natural is legitimate. The horrors of June. Madness of the people and madness of the bourgeoisie. Natural love of crime. My fury at the coup d'état. How many gunshots sustained! Another Buonaparte! What a disgrace! Still, all is quieted. Has not the President the right to invoke? What Emperor Napoleon III is? What he is worth? To find the explanation of his nature, and of his providentially. VIII To be a useful man has always seemed to me a hideous thing. 1848 was amusing only because every one was building Utopias like castles in Spain. 1848 was charming only by the very excess of the ridiculous. Robespierre is estimable only because he has made some fine phrases. IX The Revolution, by sacrifice, confirmed superstition. X _Politique_. I have no convictions, as the men of my age understand the term, because I have no ambition. There is no basis in me for conviction. There is a certain cowardice, or rather a certain softness, in honest men. The brigands alone are convinced--of what? That they must succeed. Therefore, they succeed. Why should I succeed, when I haven't even the desire to try? Glorious empires can be founded on crime, and noble religions on imposture. However, I have some convictions, in a higher sense, that cannot be understood by the men of my day. Feeling of _solitude_, from my childhood. Despite my family, and in the midst of my comrades above all,--feeling of an eternally solitary destiny. Withal, an intense desire for life and for pleasure. Almost all our life is spent in idle curiosity. In revenge, there are things which ought to rouse human curiosity to the highest degree, and which, to judge by their commonplace activity, inspire it in no one! Where are our dead friends? Why are we here? Do we come from somewhere? What is liberty? Can it harmonize with providential law? Is the number of souls finite or infinite? And the number of habitable worlds? etc., etc. XI Nations have great men only in spite of themselves. Hence the great man is the conqueror of all his nation. The modern ridiculous religions: Molière, Béranger, Garibaldi. XII