France -- History -- Coup d'état, 1851; France -- History -- Second Republic, 1848-1852; Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, 1808-1873
You lie there motionless. The minions of despotism and oppression
laugh, and enjoy the haughty illusion that you are no longer to be
feared. Fleeting joy! The peoples that are in the dark forget the past;
they see only the present, and despise you. Forgive them, they know not
what they do. Despise you! Great Heaven! despise France? And who are
they? What language do they speak? What books have they in their hands?
What names do they know by heart? What is the placard pasted on the
walls of their theatres? What forms do their arts assume, their laws,
their manners, their clothing, their pleasures, their fashions? What is
the great date for them, as for us? '89! If they take France from out
their hearts, what remains to them? O my people! Though it be fallen
and fallen for ever, is Greece despised? Is Italy despised? Is France
despised? Look at those breasts, they are your nurse; look at that
womb, it is your mother.
If she sleeps, if she is in a lethargy, silence, and off with your hat.
If she is dead, to your knees!
The exiles are scattered; destiny has blasts which disperse men like a
handful of ashes. Some are in Belgium, in Piedmont, in Switzerland,
where they do not enjoy liberty; others are in London, where they have
no roof to shelter them. One, a peasant, has been torn from his native
field; another, a soldier, has only a fragment of his sword, which was
broken in his hand; another, an artisan, is ignorant of the language of
the country, he is without clothes and without shoes, he knows not if
he shall eat food to-morrow; another has left behind him a wife and
children, a dearly loved group, the object of his labour, and the joy
of his life; another has an old mother with grey hairs, who weeps for
him; another an old father, who will die without seeing him again;
another is a lover,--he has left behind him some adored being, who will
forget him; they raise their heads and they hold out their hands to one
another; they smile; there is no nation that does not stand aside with
respect as they pass, and contemplate with profound emotion, as one of
the noblest spectacles which destiny can offer to men, all those serene
consciences, all those broken hearts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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