"'My dear Commandant, it is most essential that you should immediately see the general in question; you know he is a man of resolution, on whom one may rely. You know also that he is a man whom I have put down to be one day a marshal of France. _You will offer him, from me, 100,000 francs_; and you will ask him into what banker's or notary's hands _I shall pay 300,000 francs_ for him, in the event of his losing his command.' "I stopped here, overcome with indignation; I turned over the leaf, and I saw that the letter was signed, 'LOUIS NAPOLEON.' "I handed the letter back to the commandant, saying that it was a ridiculous and abortive affair." Who speaks thus? General Magnan. Where? In the open Court of Peers. Before whom? Who is the man seated on the prisoners' bench, the man whom Magnan covers with "scorn," the man towards whom Magnan turns his "indignant" face? Louis Bonaparte. Money, and with money gross debauchery: such were his means of action in his three enterprises at Strasburg, at Boulogne, at Paris. Two failures and a success. Magnan, who refused at Boulogne, sold himself at Paris. If Louis Bonaparte had been defeated on the 2nd of December, just as there were found on him, at Boulogne, the 500,000 francs he had brought from London, so there would have been found at the Elysee, the twenty-five millions taken from the Bank. There has, then, been in France,--one must needs speak of these things coolly,--in France, that land of the sword, that land of cavaliers, the land of Hoche, of Drouot, and of Bayard--there has been a day, when a man, surrounded by five or six political sharpers, experts in ambuscades, and grooms of _coups d'etat_, lolling in a gilded office, his feet on the fire-dogs, a cigar in his mouth, placed a price upon military honour, weighed it in the scales like a commodity, a thing buyable and sellable, put down the general at a million, the private at a louis, and said of the conscience of the French army: "That is worth so much." And this man is the nephew of the Emperor. By the bye, this nephew is not proud: he accommodates himself, with great facility, to the necessities of his adventures; adapts himself readily and without reluctance, to every freak of destiny. Place him in London, and let it be his interest to please the English government, he would not hesitate, and with the very hand which now seeks to seize the sceptre of Charlemagne, he would grasp the truncheon of a policeman. If I were not Napoleon, I would be Vidocq. And here thought pauses! And such is the man by whom France is governed! governed, do I say? possessed rather in full sovereignty!