"We never cease," I said, "to be astonished at events; ever we imagine that we have come to the last; ever the revolution recommences. Those who, since forty years, are marching to reach the goal, repine; they thought they were sitting for a few hours by the edge of their tomb: vain hope! Time strikes those travellers gasping for breath, and forces them to move onward. How many times, since they have been on the road, has the Old Monarchy fallen at their feet! Scarce escaped from those successive crumblings, they are obliged once more to pass over its rubbish and its dust. Which century will see the end of the movement?... "Providence has willed that the transient generations destined for unremembered days should be small, in order that the damage might not be great. And so we see that everything proves abortive, that everything is inconsistent, that no one is like himself or embraces his whole destiny, that no event produces what it contained and what it ought to produce. The superior men of the age which is expiring are dying away; will they have successors? The ruins of Palmyra end in sands." Passing from this general observation to particular facts, I show, in my reasoning, that they might deal with Madame la Duchesse de Berry by arbitrary measures, regarding her as a prisoner of police, of war, of State, or asking the Chambers to pass a bill of attainder; that they might bring her within the competence of the laws by applying to her the Briqueville Law of Exception or the common law of the Code; that they might regard her person as inviolable and sacred. The ministers maintained the first opinion, the men of July the second, the Royalists the third. I go through the several suppositions: I prove that, if Madame la Duchesse de Berry made a descent upon France, she had been drawn thither only because she heard men's opinions asking for a different present, calling for a different future. False to its popular extraction, the revolution proceeding from the Days of July repudiated glory and courted shame. Except in a few hearts worthy of giving it an asylum, liberty, become the object of the derision of those who made it their rallying-cry, that liberty which buffoons bandy about with kicks, that liberty strangled after dishonour by the tourniquet of the laws of exception will, through its destruction, transform the Revolution of 1830 into a cynical fraud. Thereupon, and to deliver us all, Madame la Duchesse de Berry arrived. Fortune betrayed her; a Jew sold her; a minister bought her[486]. If they are not willing to proceed against her by police measures, the only alternative is to indict her at the assizes. I suppose this to have been done, and I bring on the stage the Princess's defending counsel; then, after making the defending counsel speak, I address the counsel for the prosecution: [Sidenote: My pamphlet.] "Advocate.... stand up....