last night." During the earlier years of his reign the penalty of
death was, as it were, abolished, and the re-erection of the scaffold
was a violence done to the king. As the Grève disappeared with the
elder branch, a bourgeois Grève was established under the name of the
Barrière St. Jacques, for "practical men" felt the necessity of a
quasi-legitimate guillotine. This was one of the victories of Casimir
Perier, who represented the narrow side of the bourgeoisie, over Louis
Philippe, who represented the liberal side. The king annotated Beccaria
with his own hand, and after the Fieschi machine he exclaimed, "What
a pity that I was not wounded, for then I could have shown mercy!"
Another time, alluding to the resistance offered by his ministers, he
wrote with reference to a political culprit, who is one of the most
illustrious men of the day, "His pardon is granted, and all that I
have to do now is to obtain it." Louis Philippe was as gentle as Louis
IX., and as good as Henri IV., and in our opinion, in history, where
goodness is the rare pearl, to have been good is almost better than to
have been great.
As Louis Philippe has been sternly judged by some, and perhaps harshly
by others, it is very simple that a man, himself a phantom at the
present day, who knew that king, should offer his testimony for him in
the presence of history; this testimony, whatever its value may be, is
evidently, and before all, disinterested. An epitaph written by a dead
man is sincere; one shadow may console another shadow, for sharing the
same darkness gives the right to praise, and there is no fear that it
will ever be said of two tombs in exile,--this man flattered the other.
CHAPTER IV.
CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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