In a word, a journal,
with two or three hundred thousand francs, good, at the back of it, has
just been started, with a view to making an opposition paper to content
the discontented, without prejudice to the national government of the
citizen-king. We scoff at liberty as at despotism now, and at religion
or incredulity quite impartially. And since, for us, 'our country'
means a capital where ideas circulate and are sold at so much a line,
a succulent dinner every day, and the play at frequent intervals,
where profligate women swarm, where suppers last on into the next day,
and light loves are hired by the hour like cabs; and since Paris will
always be the most adorable of all countries, the country of joy,
liberty, wit, pretty women, _mauvais sujets_, and good wine; where the
truncheon of authority never makes itself disagreeably felt, because
one is so close to those who wield it,--we, therefore, sectaries of
the god Mephistopheles, have engaged to whitewash the public mind, to
give fresh costumes to the actors, to put a new plank or two in the
government booth, to doctor doctrinaires, and warm up old Republicans,
to touch up the Bonapartists a bit, and revictual the Centre; provided
that we are allowed to laugh _in petto_ at both kings and peoples, to
think one thing in the morning and another at night, and to lead a
merry life _a la_ Panurge, or to recline upon soft cushions, _more
orientali_.
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